Use science to find solutions for cutting carbon emissions

Use science to find solutions for cutting carbon emissions

On the face of it, it seems that there are dozens of projects being studied in various labs around the world to save the planet Earth. The range of these projects is indeed stunning. One project, called solar geoengineering, involves two technologies, which both focus on reflecting a significant amount of sunlight back into the space. In marine cloud brightening, drone ships are used to spray sea salt into clouds to make them denser and hence more reflective of sunlight. The other technology, stratospheric aerosol injection, envisages use of aircraft, balloons or rockets and artillery shells that launch millions of tonnes of sulfates into the atmosphere, to make a layer of particles that scatters sunlight. Another concept involves launching a spatial umbrella that reflects sunlight before it enters the Earth’s atmosphere. All these methods focus on reflecting sunlight in an attempt to cut the temperatures on the Earth. Millions of dollars have already been committed to research on these and many other concepts and other similarly outlandish and harebrained ideas. In fact, Sweden was all set to launch a field test of a high altitude balloon for a stratospheric aerosol injection but the project, led by researchers of Harvard, was