Home About Chat Users Issues Party Candidates Polling Firms Media News Polls Calendar Key Races United States President Senate House Governors International

New User Account
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource." 
Email: Password:

  Engineering Earth 'is feasible'
NEWS DETAILS
Parent(s) Issue 
Contributorparticleman 
Last Editedparticleman  Sep 01, 2009 09:48pm
Logged 0
CategoryStudy
MediaTV News - British Broadcasting Corporation BBC News
News DateWednesday, September 2, 2009 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionA UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are "technically possible". Such approaches could be effective, the authors said in their report.

But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would "clean" the air. Such engineering projects could either remove carbon dioxide or reflect the Sun's rays away from the planet.

Ambitious as these schemes seem, the report concluded that many of them potentially had merit, and research into them should be pursued.

The authors stated, however, that some of the technology was barely formed and there were "major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts".

One of the technologies considered "too risky" was pouring iron filings into the ocean to grow algae which, the authors said, could cause "substantial damage" to marine life and freshwater, estuary and coastal ecosystems.

Of the two basic geo-engineering approaches, the report concluded that those involving the removal of carbon dioxide were preferable, as they effectively return the climate system closer to its pre-industrial state.

But the authors found that many of these options were currently too expensive to implement widely.
Share
ArticleRead Full Article

NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION