Hack the Planet: Science's Best Hope - or Worst Nightmare - for Averting Climate Catastrophe

Blurb

An inside tour of the incredible and probably dangerous plans to counteract the effects of climate change through experiments that range from the plausible to the fantasticDavid Battisti had arrived in Cambridge expecting a bloodbath So had many of the other scientists who had joined him for an invitation only workshop on climate science in 2007 with geoengineering at the top of the agenda We can t take deliberately altering the atmosphere seriously he thought because there s no way we ll ever know enough to control it But by the second day with bad climate news piling on bad climate news he was having second thoughts When the scientists voted in a straw poll on whether to support geoengineering research Battisti filled with fear about the future voted in favor While the pernicious effects of global warming are clear efforts to reduce the carbon emissions that cause it have fallen far short of what s needed Some scientists have started exploring more direct and radical ways to cool the planet such as Pouring reflective pollution into the upper atmosphere Making clouds brighter Growing enormous blooms of algae in the oceanSchemes that were science fiction just a few years ago have become earnest plans being studied by alarmed scientists determined to avoid a climate catastrophe In Hack the Planet Science magazine reporter Eli Kintisch looks more closely at this array of ideas and characters asking if these risky schemes will work and just how geoengineering is changing the world Scientists are developing geoengineering techniques for worst case scenarios But what would those desperate times look like Kintisch outlines four circumstances collapsing ice sheets megadroughts a catastrophic methane release and slowing of the global ocean conveyor belt Normal 0 0 1 89 510 4 1 626 11 1025 0 0 0 Shipping and handlingThis item will ship to United States but the seller has not specified shipping options Contact the seller opens in a new window