Friday, June 01, 2012

Goodbye blue sky



The recent study showing that geoengineering via aerosols would make our planet's sky whitish, like what's seen in urban environments, is making the rounds.  It'll be interesting to see if we get some sky color denialism as a push back.  I also haven't seen whether urban skies would be even more altered as a result.

I expect this new study could have political repercussions.  The "don't worry about your SUV, we'll just partially blot out the sun and turn the sky a different color" crowd might find it a hard sell.  Especially when this change is from a human perspective, forever.  It will take centuries of pumping pollution in the atmosphere to balance the effect while the majority of extra CO2 is slowly eliminated.

Despite all this, I think we can't rule out the possibility that things will get so bad that we'll have to consider it.

UPDATE:  by comment request: