The Second Floor

Join us at T2F for a talk and discussion featuring Mason Inman on radical ideas to cool our planet

Wednesday, 17th February 2010 | 6:30 pm

Artificial volcanoes? Ships creating clouds over the oceans? Forests covering the Sahara Desert? These sound like crazy ideas, but they are actual proposals from top scientists for cooling Earth – approaches known as geoengineering.

The planet’s temperature keeps rising, driven by humanity’s increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. But the world isn’t making much progress on tackling the root problem – emissions from power plants, cars, buildings, and more. So scientists are increasingly talking about radical ideas of how to cool the planet, by blocking some of the sunlight hitting Earth’s surface, or through planet-scale projects to suck up greenhouse gases and lock them away.

But some of these approaches could have serious side-effects, such as disrupting the monsoons that more than a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on. Hacking the planet like this is a risky way of dealing with global warming. Do we understand the planet well enough to tinker with it like this? Who decides where to set Earth’s thermostat? And how do we regulate these technologies?

About Mason Inman

Mason Inman is an American journalist, currently based in Karachi, who covers science and the environment for National Geographic News, New Scientist, Science, Nature, and other publications. He also blogs at Failing Gracefully.

Date: Wednesday, 17th February, 2010
Time: 6:30 pm
Minimum Donation: Anything you like. Please support our vision of intellectual poverty alleviation by donating generously.
Venue: PeaceNiche | T2F
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Seats are limited and will be available on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. No reservations.

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