I certainly agree that it would be a drastic measure, but in response to those who say that we’re past the point of no return, that there is no hope left, that we’re all doomed, etc. I’m saying that that isn’t true. The Mt. Pinatubo eruption ejected something like 10 km3 of material, for example, but only a fraction of that ended up in the upper atmosphere. That fraction, however, lowered global temperatures by about 0.5C for a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo I think that trying to duplicate such an effect should be a measure of last resort, but I do think we need to study it and understand it as best we can in case we have to use it.
I would be very surprised if DARPA does not have several projects zooming along about just these types of scenarios, from CO2 scrubbing to upper atmosphere particulates.
The paper on the improved CO2 scrubber and the possibility of combining captured CO2 with hydrogen to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbons was a joint paper by a guy from Columbia a guy from the University of Calgary, and I believe that they are amongst the front runners in this area. I also heard a very good interview on a radio show a while back about the issue of research into the possibly of depositing material in the upper atmosphere, but unfortunately I don’t seem to have remembered the name of the speaker properly. The short of what he was saying is that there isn’t enough work being done, but I’ll do some more searching and see if I can find him and one of his papers on the topic.
Here’s the guy. This is very similar to what I heard him say in a radio interview a few months ago. (This is the person I originally thought gave the talk, btw, but somehow I screwed up the first search I did. ) http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XkEys3PeseA http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Misc/DWK-CV-2008.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20homerdixon.html http://e360 content/feature.msp?id=2107.yale.edu/
