Dear All, As some of you know, I published a paper last year:
Robock, Alan, 2008: 20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea. Bull. Atomic Scientists, 64, No. 2, 14-18, 59, doi:10.2968/064002006. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/20Reasons.pdf which also produced a roundtable discussion: http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/roundtables/has-the-time-come-geoengineering Since then, I have been evaluating these reasons and two of them seem to not be of concern, excess acid deposition and cost. Our two papers on these results, now under review, are: Kravitz, Ben, Alan Robock, Luke Oman, Georgiy Stenchikov, and Allison B. Marquardt, 2009: Sulfuric acid deposition from stratospheric geoengineering with sulfate aerosols. Submitted to J. Geophys. Res. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/AcidDepositionJGRsubmitted.pdf Robock, Alan, Allison B. Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2009: The practicality of geoengineering. Submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/practicality8NoFig3.pdf But I have also been giving talks on the subject and two days ago a member of an audience suggested another reason why geoengineering (with stratospheric aerosols) may be a bad idea: It would ruin Earth-based optical astronomy! With the tremendous investment in equipment, and mountain-top observatories to get above most of the junk in the atmosphere, not to mention sophisticated signal processing algorithms to remove the remaining atmospheric influence, how could astronomers stay silent and allow permanent clouds that would block their seeing? Alan Alan Robock, Professor II Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-732-932-9800 x6222 Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644 14 College Farm Road E-mail: [email protected] New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
