A temperature reduction is what the Earth needs now, so a similar event may help us fight global warming, perhaps the most dangerous problem for humanity.
Geoengineering, the deliberate modification of the environment, has been considered the top of arrogance by many people and most environmentalists. We are very far from understanding how the climate system works. Who could say that we won't make things worse? We'd better be alert. Geoengineering should proceed with caution.
However, even if we try, it will take us decades to make the transition from a carbon-based economy to one powered by new energy technologies. In the meantime, it is possible that global warming may get to a point of no return. This is where geoengineering comes in: it's not a long-term solution but a way to keep the earth from overheating while we wait for efficient, green-energy technologies to come on line.
Can geoengineering really do the job? In fact, modern global warming is evidence of negative geoengineering, the result of all that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we've been throwing into the atmosphere for a century or so. But it was the Pinatubo eruption that provided an example of geoengineering's potential. Scientists studying the eruption wondered if they could do the same thing deliberately.
They are, as many critics have pointed out, merely Band-Aids. But Band-Aids have their uses, except that the only real solution to global warming is to end our dependency on fossil fuels.
Adapted from an article by Bjorn Lomborg in Time Magazine. Picture by Getty Images.
