The technology may even spark terrible wars. There is no way of predicting how the world's long-term weather may respond to having a gigantic chemical sunshade plonked on top of it.Īs one of the world's leading climate experts Janos Pasztor - who advised at the UN's Paris climate agreement and now works for New York's highly respected Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative - warns: 'If you make use of this technology and do it badly or ungoverned, then you can have different kinds of global risks created that can have equal, if not even bigger, challenges to global society than climate change.' Any heat alteration would cause an accompanying shift in rainfall patterns. Heat drives the water cycle - in which water evaporates, forms clouds and drops as rain. Everything in the world's climate is interconnected.įurthermore, any change in global average temperature would in turn change the way in which heat is distributed around the globe, with some places warming more than others. Scientists may be able to set the perfect climatic conditions for farmers in America's vast Midwest, but at the same time this setting might wreak drought havoc across Africa.įor it is not possible to change the temperature in one part of the world and not disturb the rest. The project is being funded by billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates (pictured) These droplets acted like tiny mirrors to reflect sunlight. The volcano disgorged 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide high above the planet, where it formed droplets of sulphuric acid that floated around the globe for more than a year. When the volcano Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines exploded in 1991, it killed more than 700 people and left more than 200,000 homeless.īut it also gave scientists the chance to monitor the consequences of a vast chemical cloud in the stratosphere. The inspiration was in part spawned by a natural disaster. So where did the idea for such a mind-boggling scheme come from? One of the Harvard team's directors, Lizzie Burns, admits: 'Our idea is terrifying… But so is climate change.' An advisory panel of independent experts is to assess all the possible risks associated with it. One fear is that spreading dust (pictured) into the stratosphere may damage the ozone layer that protects us from hazardous ultraviolet radiation which can damage human DNA and cause cancers SCoPEx is, however, on hold, amid fears that it could trigger a disastrous series of chain reactions, creating climate havoc in the form of serious droughts and hurricanes, and bring death to millions of people around the world. For the ensuing 24 hours, the balloon would be steered by propellers back through this artificial cloud, its onboard sensors monitoring both the dust's sun-reflecting abilities and its effects on the thin surrounding air. This would seed a tube-shaped area of sky half a mile long and 100 yards in diameter. This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust - the size of a bag of flour - into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico. Indeed, the plans are so well advanced that the initial 'sky-clouding' experiments were meant to have begun months ago. This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon (pictured) to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust - the size of a bag of flour - into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico
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