Scientist:
Inject Sulfur into Air to Battle Global Warming
By
Sara Goudarzi - LiveScience Staff Writer
One way to curb global
warming is to purposely shoot sulfur
into the atmosphere, a scientist suggested today.
The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse
gas,
into the atmosphere. It also releases sulfur that
cools the planet by reflecting solar radiation
away from Earth.
Most researchers say the warming
effect has been winning in recent decades.
Injecting sulfur into the second atmospheric layer
closest to Earth would reflect more sunlight back
to space and offset greenhouse gas warming, according
to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck
Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, University of California
at San Diego.
Crutzen suggests carrying sulfur into the atmosphere
via balloons and using artillery guns to release
it, where the particles would stay for up to two
years. The results could be seen in six months.
Nature does something like this naturally.
When Mount
Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines
in1991, millions of tons of sulfur was injected
into the atmosphere, enhancing reflectivity and
cooling the Earth's surface by an average of 0.9
degrees Fahrenheit in the year following the eruption.
"Given the grossly disappointing international
political
response to the required greenhouse
gas emissions, ... research on the feasibility
and environmental consequences of climate engineering
of the kind presented in this paper, which might
need to be deployed in future, should not be tabooed,"
Crutzen said.
This proposal is detailed in the August issue
of the journal Climatic Change.