Scientist Publishes 'Escape Route' from Global Warming

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.

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

It would cost between $25bn and $50bn - or about $25 or $50 per head in the developed world - to launch sufficient sulphate to last for up to two years.

Side-effects could be an increase in the destruction of the ozone layer and whitening of the sky, although the particles would make sunsets and sunrises more spectacular, he said.

Source

I am in no way an expert in this field, and am not even completely convinced that was is going on is not just a natural cycle, but to anybody that does does know what they are taking about, what do you think of the professor theory??

[edit on 8/1/2006 by pstiffy]

Don't have time to read it just right now. However a potential side effect of damaging the Ozone layer doesn't sound too great to me. I do agree that the human emissions of CO2 and the like will hardly be curtailed as the developing world starts to use more and more power.

I don't think that all of the Global warming is caused by man and that it is mainly a natural phenomenon that we can't control or stop. Taking a step like the above scientist proposes might do more harm than the global warming itself with the damage to the Ozone.

Their are only 3 ways to combat man made Greenhouse gas emissions:

1. Use less fossil fuels.......Not likely in this lifetime.
2. Invent large scale use of alternative energy sources..... Potential, but still years if not decades away from mass world wide use.
3. Develop some way of increasing Carbon sinks on a massive scale. We have done a pretty good job of destroying some of the largest Carbon sinks around the globe. Granted this approach just covers up the problem but if there was a way to do it on the oceans it would alleviate the emissions man is putting into the air.

Course if GW is more of natural thing rather than man made, none of what we do will really have much impact on changing GW one way or the other. It is human hubris to think we can control the worlds climate.

Maybe we will get lucky and a Supervolcano will blow high sky into the atmosphere and lower worldwide temps for a few years.....oh wait that will release even more CO2, can't win even with a volcano.

I am not a scientist, but i do have common sense, and it tells me to leave earth alone at the moment.

i agree don't tamper anymore with it as chances are you will end up causeing greater harm then you are trying to fix.

now i won't disagree that we have had some small impact on the warming cycle. i believe that it is actualy partialy a natural phonominon. the earth has had warming and cooling trends throughought histoy ie: the ice age. man has done more than enough damage by trying to protect or fix things as it is. don't mess with things that we don't realy understand or realy know about. i would recomend if this idiot goes ahead with this, that he should be drawn and quartered on live tv and internet. that might keep other crackpot schemes from being implemented.

Compounds containing sulphate are acidic.

arnt the oceans beomeing more and more acidic, and wont this make more species unable to adapt in time...hence die ?

Probably. But what does that mean? The volume of the oceans is huge, though I suppose this rise in acidicy is in concentrated volumes over certain areas.

Why take the chance of increasing the acidicy of rain for the sake of cooling the 'globe'?

To those who say global warming is a natural cycle, it's possible, but don't you really think we are making it worse than it could be 'naturally'?

Is it possible we have two causes of gw happening simultaniously?
I mean really we do have a problem with Co2, we certainly ain't helping things.