How to avoid the plastic at the grocery store

Let's talk about geoengineering, are we going? I am referring to the approach of dispersing chemicals in the upper atmosphere to combat climate change, which would lower temperatures as tiny particles reflected more of the sunlight away from Earth .

This form of geoengineering, known as the management of solar radiation, has its supporters, who argue that it could be a relatively fast and inexpensive solution to global warming. They say the concept deserves at least to be experienced to better understand it in case society deems it necessary in the midst of a future climate calamity.

But solar geoengineering is receiving a lot of criticism and one of the main arguments against it is that it can have unintended consequences. Of course, say these critics, temperatures can be lowered around the world, but the approach can have other very uneven effects – a drought on land of abundance, perhaps, or severe storms in areas that are not normally affected by extreme weather conditions. This could lead to political instability, among other repercussions.

A new study by researchers at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions suggests that these fears, at least, could be appeased. The research, published Monday in Nature Climate Change, shows that a mid-way approach – spreading enough chemicals to lower temperatures somewhat, but not to pre-industrial levels – would leave no region poorer than any other region. regarding major storms and other impacts.

David Keith, Harvard physicist, eminent geoengineering researcher and one of the authors of the study, described this idea as a "reduction in global warming" that will occur later this century and that Pressing drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. help avoid the worst of climate change.

"Nobody ever really thought that it made sense to use solar geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reductions," Dr. Keith said in an interview.

Like all other geoengineering studies, this was done using computer models (no outside experiments have yet been done, although Dr. Keith and others have done so). proposed some).