Scientists consider a wild plan to obscure the Sun to save the Earth – BGR

• Scientists have published a paper discussing the possibility of using particles released into the atmosphere to reduce sunlight and calm global warming.
• The plan would reduce the chances of a severe drought by up to 90 percent, the researchers say.
• Geoengineering on a global scale could save humanity or potentially create even more problems.

Hey, then you know the plot of some catastrophic or post-apocalyptic movies (like Snowpiercer, for example), where the world gets so hot that scientists take action and actually make the Earth absorb less sunlight, thereby cooling it? Yes, it never works, or works too well, and in the end the Earth is doomed anyway. It’s a fun plot device for a movie, but a group of scientists actually seem to see it as a possible solution to stop one of the effects of global warming.

In a new article published in Environmental research letters, researchers led by scientists from the University of Cape Town suggest that the expulsion of reflective particles into the Earth’s atmosphere could eventually prevent the Earth from enduring devastating droughts due to ongoing climate change. No, this is not a joke.

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The idea – throwing up a specific type of particle into the atmosphere to prevent a certain percentage of sunlight from reaching the surface – might seem like a totally ridiculous idea, but if we’re talking about preventing a world collapse, we need to be open to wilder possibilities. The researchers who wrote this article suggest that, using models from the Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble Project, we could potentially reduce the chances of a “Day Zero” drought (the term given to the hypothetical day when the world officially ran out of clean water for the totality of humanity) by 90%.

It’s pretty impressive if it really worked as intended, but there are plenty of other problems that remain. For example, like Futurism he points out, simply fighting a catastrophe like a planetary drought would not solve global warming at all. It could potentially mitigate one of the symptoms of global warming, but it wouldn’t actually reverse the damage already done. In fact, it could potentially make things worse in ways we may not quite realize yet.

Another major obstacle between humanity and global geoengineering is the fact that to make such a decision, everyone would have to be on board. A country cannot simply decide to dim the lights for the rest of us without making sure all countries agree with the decision. Of course, it would likely lead to serious pushbacks by many nations and there is also the potential that military conflict could arise when two sides refuse to back down. Trying to save the planet from drought could eventually trigger another type of catastrophe that ended the planet: nuclear war.

In any case, the card is just that, a card, and there are no plans to actually set these ideas in motion… yet.

Mike Wehner has been reporting on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in VR, wearables, smartphones and the technology of the future. Most recently, Mike worked as a Tech Editor at The Daily Dot and has appeared on USA Today, Time.com, and countless other websites and in print. His love of the news is second only to his addiction to games.