"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."
-- quote usually attributed to Mark Twain.
We have a hard enough time predicting the weather. Predicting the impact of global warming is even tougher. The question now being increasingly debated is, can we do anything to reverse our own impact on the planet's atmosphere?
We have not had much success reducing carbon emissions, and even if we do, reducing the rate at which we spew carbon into the air may not be sufficient. So can we actually suck carbon out of the atmosphere?
Possibly, but it's also a scary prospect: Purposely geo-engineering the planet's atmosphere to reverse the accidental geo-engineering we've committed in the past. From a report from the Royal Society in London:
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Unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
are much more successful then they have been so far,
additional action may be required should it become
necessary to cool the Earth this century.
Such action might involve geoengineering, defined as the
deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate
system, in order to moderate global warming.
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I just hope human folly doesn't make things worse.