Latest Geoengineering Stories

Ecologists outline necessary actions for mitigating and adapting to a changing climateGlobal warming may impair the ability of ecosystems to perform vital services -- such as providing food, clean water and carbon sequestration -- says the nation's largest organization of ecological scientists. In a statement released today, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) outlines strategies that focus on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem functions to mitigate and adapt to climate...

While governments around the world continue to explore strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a new study suggests policymakers should focus on what needs to be achieved in the next 40 years in order to keep long-term options viable for avoiding dangerous levels of warming.The study is the first of its kind to use a detailed energy system model to analyze the relationship between mid-century targets and the likelihood of achieving long-term outcomes."Setting mid-century...

Climate experts say geo-engineers are exploring radical new ways to combat Earth's climate crisis, including fertilizing the seas with iron, scattering particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight or building a sunshade in space, AFP reported.However, many of these ideas are contested as risky for the environment and laden with unknowns about cost, practicality and legality. But mainstream scientists who once dismissed these projects are now starting to consider their possibilities.Many...

A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report in the journal...

NEW YORK, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue. Roofing Materials in the U.S., 2nd Edition http://www.reportlinker.com/p0109231/Roofing-Materials-in-the-US-2nd-Edition.html This new SBI report reveals astonishingly that roofing product manufacturing managed to grow modestly from $10.6 billion in 2007 to $10.9 billion in 2008, a gain of three percent. This is credited to increased asphalt pricing in 2008 and a...

The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, a new study has found.The report (published September 1, by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science) found that unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary to cool the planet. However, the...

Hot on the heels of the Royal Society's Geoengineering the Climate report, September's Physics World contains feature comment from UK experts stressing the need to start taking geoengineering "“ deliberate interventions in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming "“ more seriously.Of increased importance, as policy makers and politicians prepare to negotiate binding carbon emission targets at December's United Nation's Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (CoP15),...

Giant "synthetic trees" that reflect heat back into the sky may become a common sight within the next 20 years, as the Institution of Mechanical Engineers sets out to combat the world's climate change with cutting edge technology.Engineers are working on producing 100,000 artificial trees as part of three practical geo-engineering ideas listed in a new report. Without geo-engineering, dangerous climate change will be unavoidable, said the authors of the report. A 100-year roadmap to...

Climate experts say a fleet of wind-powered ships could be one of the more feasible solutions of climate engineering to reduce global warming.The Copenhagen Consensus on Climate has released an analysis paper that addresses a variety of proposed climate engineering options.The paper was written to address the question: "If the global community wants to spend up to, say $250 billion per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do most good for...

Geoengineering techniques aim to slow global warming through the use of human-made changes to the Earth's land, seas or atmosphere. But new research shows that the use of geoengineering to do environmental good may cause other environmental harm. In a symposium at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting, ecologists discuss the viability of geoengineering, concluding that it is potentially dangerous at the global scale, where the risks outweigh the benefits."The bigger the...