"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
THE idea seems like something out of a Superman comic: a machine or missile shoots tonnes of particles into the atmosphere that would block the Sun's rays, cool down the overheated Earth, and reverse global warming.
But at the weekend scientists gathered in a closed session organised by NASA and Stanford University to discuss researching such a strategy. The idea is called geo-engineering: using technology to tinker with the Earth's delicate climate balance.
Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said his modelling showed the idea worked. "We found that if you blocked 20 per cent of the sunlight over the Arctic Ocean it would be enough to restore sea ice," he said.