Page 271 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

comment indicative of a much more robust green movement in Europe, which at
the time still hoped the United States might sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Two years later, the Pentagon released a controversial report titled “An
Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States
National Security.” The report explained how global warming might lead to
rapid and catastrophic global cooling through mechanisms such as the slowing
of North Atlantic deep-water circulation—and recommended that the govern-
75
ment “explore geoengineering options that control the climate.” Such actions
would have to be studied carefully, of course, given their potential to exacerbate
conflict among nations. A symposium sponsored in 2004 by the Tyndall Cen-
tre for Climate Change Research in Cambridge, England, set out to “identify,
debate, and evaluate” possible but highly controversial options for the design
and construction of engineering projects for the management and mitigation of
global climate change.
“Russian Scientist Suggests Burning Sulfur in Stratosphere to Fight Global
Warming,” read the headlines from Moscow in November 2005. The article
referred to a letter from the prominent scientist Yuri Izrael, the head of the
Global Climate and Ecology Institute, to President Vladimir Putin warning that
global warming required immediate action and suggesting burning thousands of
tons of sulfur in the stratosphere as a remedy. Izrael said his plan was based on
the idea of putting aerosols into the atmosphere at an altitude of 8 to 12 miles
to create a reflective layer that would lower the heating effect of solar radiation:
“In order to lower the temperature of the Earth by 1–2 degrees we need to pump
about 600,000 tons of aerosol particles. To do that, we need to burn from 100–
200,000 tons of sulfur. And we do not have to burn the sulfur there, we can sim-
ply use sulfur-rich aircraft fuel.” It seems that Izrael did not make his own calcula-
tions, but simply dusted off Penner’s 1984 idea and used the exact figures of his
countryman Budyko, published in 1974. 76
A 2006 editorial on geoengineering by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen contained
a proposal that was very similar to Budyko’s, although framed by different envi-
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ronmental and policy concerns. He came to similar conclusions, too, except
his calculations indicated that ten times more sulfur would be needed, between
1 and 2 million tons per year. Budyko had pegged the geoengineering sulfur input
at about one-ten-thousandth of “that due to man’s activity,” while Crutzen had
it as “only 2–4 percent of the current input” (emphasis added). Crutzen wrote
78
that albedo enhancement was not the best solution to global warming “by far,”
but he still recommended that the Budyko/National Academy notions of using
artillery guns, balloons, or aircraft to inject sulfates or other particles into the
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stratosphere “might again be explored and debated.” He suggested that the

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