Whose call to shade the Earth?

Mar 3

It would be a grim day if your consultation with a team of the world’s top oncologists ended with advice that you give serious thought to some untested treatments. It happened to us twice this week.

The first round of advice came from an expert panel convened by the United Nations saying it’s time to get serious about studying methods of reflecting sunlight that might temporarily cool the Earth. The second opinion came from an ad hoc group of over 90 climate scientists, including James Hansen, who issued an appeal for accelerated research into “solar radiation modification” (SRM).

The basic idea is pretty straightforward — we know that volcanoes cool the Earth, blanketing the planet in aerosol particles like sulphur, which reflect sunlight. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to replicate that effect artificially with fleets of planes or balloons spreading aerosols in the sky.

Both groups of scientists were emphatic that we should not be deploying SRM at scale because we know far too little about its unintended consequences or even its direct impacts.

Both groups were similarly clear that efforts to cut climate pollution are much too slow, and we’d better get ahead of the inevitable pressure to unleash artificial volcanoes.

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Peter Allan

Whose call to shade the Earth?

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