Physics World June 13, 2018
At the European Union General Assembly in Vienna in April, the World Meteorological Organization proposed that to meet the Paris agreement on global warming, we should look seriously at the artificial manipulation of the climate through geoengineering. Geo-engineering strategies fall into two groups: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). Afforestation and land management, ocean fertilisation and carbon capture and storage are soft approaches to CDR with low-risk. There are currently no low-risk technologies for SRM, and further research is needed to quantify risks. Geo-engineering strategies that act to cool the planet and mitigate against global warming exist, but the question remains, how should the approach be implemented, if at all?…read more.