Shoot pollution particles into atmosphere to cool Earth, says Obama adviser
President Barack Obama's new science adviser has said that global warming is so dire, the new administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 11:45PM BST 08 Apr 2009
John Holdren said that the idea of geo-engineering the climate is being discussed. Options include cloud-seeding and shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.
"It's got to be looked at," he said, even if such experimental measures were only used as a last resort. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
In a further departure from the Bush administration's policy on global warming, Mr Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching.
Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, the chances of "really intolerable consequences" increased substantially, he said.
Though he characterised the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view, in an interview with the Associated Press he said he had raised it with the White House.
Mr Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. Similar ideas have also been discussed in Parliament.
The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."
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