• Question: What Is Geoengineering and Why Is It Considered a Climate Change Solution?

    Asked by benjidavis to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      The US National Academy of Sciences defines Geo-engineering as “options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.” Basically, humans trying to control the atmosphere to counteract the negative effects of global warming,like making it rain in an area suffering from drought. It could be argued that we’ve done it accidentally already, by pumping all the greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in the first place?!

    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hello benjidavis,

      Geoengineering comes from the Greek word ‘Geo’ (earth). I guess it is to do with using natural resources from the earth to find engineering solutions and make angineering more sustainable and less energy consuming i.e. greener.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I am no expert on this I am afraid……but it is a fancy name for trying to alter the climate and temperature of the Earth. So, if people can come up with good ways to do this, they could potentially use them to reverse any advers climate changes that happen on Earth due to humans or other factors.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      as far as i can tell this attempting huge scale control of climate to counter global warming. Like reducing the amount of light hitting the earth, of capturing CO2 in micro-organisms in the sea by rapidly increasing their growth
      The risks are …it may not work..if it does well the earth is such an amizing complex set of blanaces and interactions its almost impossible to predict the changes that may occur..
      Even in the UK..some say global warming will warm us up..others say the gulf stream will stop and we will get much colder .
      so incredibly complicated set of events to try and predict.

      Now off to read up a bit more on this..thanks for the question

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