Climate change has all sorts of people worried. The ones who want to do something about it are proposing something drastic, such as anti global warming blockers. These have a sort of “sunglasses” effect, meaning that they want planes to release sun-blocking particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. While this sounds freaky, Harvard and Yale researchers found that this method of geoengineering only costs $2 billion or $3 billion annually. This, while it seems like a monstrous figure, is a lot less than the tens of trillions of climate-change damages that the United Nations estimates.
How It Will Work
The Harvard and Yale researchers’ report for this geoengineering method involves a hundred special aircraft that will annually fly 60,000 total flights. This is about 600 times on average each, or 2 flights a day per aircraft. They wrote that this is not a very large program; however, it is large enough that a single nation cannot keep a program like this a secret.
Global Warming Geoengineering Has Opposition
Geoengineering is when humans try to manipulate the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming, and many scientists oppose this concept. The scientists in the opposition believe that methods such as the one above might have unintended consequences for the Earth. In addition, it treats climate change symptoms, instead of causes, which many climate scientists believe are related to human expansion.
Global Warming Geoengineering Has Support
While some scientists oppose geoengineering, other scientists support it, as they see no other fast way. These researchers believe that it would be immoral to not research geoengineering, because horrible consequences of climate change might be closer in the future than we think. In that case, they say, we better be ready for drastic action.
China has already experimented with geoengineering, including the “Sky River” program. Because of its large population and dry areas, China plans to bring water from one area of its country to another, using satellites. This is an artificial rain experiment, but China sees this as a way to keep its population alive. While there are those to oppose geoengineering, we believe that more research is needed to evaluate the pros and cons. There might come a time when humans need to be prepared for global warming consequences. At some point, they might need to leave the Earth for another planet. Or, they can choose to make the Earth habitable enough for themselves.
