Cool cloud The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991
David Harlow / U.S. Geological Survey / TIME-LIFE Pictures / Getty Images
By BJORN LOMBORG Sunday, Nov. 14, 2010
The late climate scientist Stephen Schneider used to compare the modern world's dependence on fossil fuels to a drug addict's need for heroin. The habit is dangerous and unhealthy, yet almost impossible to break. Certainly, that's the lesson to be drawn from the inability of the world's governments to reduce carbon emissions over the past 20 years. So what are we to do? The solution for addiction often involves palliatives like methadone for a heroin junkie, and so it may be for our addiction to fossil fuels. Our planetary methadone, Schneider said, may be geoengineering — or the attempt to replicate the effect Mount Pinatubo had on the climate in 1991.In the course of a long weekend in 1991, the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo volcano injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to temporarily reduce the sunlight reaching the earth's surface by about 10%. As a result, global temperatures dropped by an average of 0.5 degrees C over the next 18 months. Turns out the lesson nature taught us that weekend has not been wasted; it may help us combat global warming./.../
The late climate scientist Stephen Schneider used to compare the modern world's dependence on fossil fuels to a drug addict's need for heroin. The habit is dangerous and unhealthy, yet almost impossible to break. Certainly, that's the lesson to be drawn from the inability of the world's governments to reduce carbon emissions over the past 20 years. So what are we to do? The solution for addiction often involves palliatives like methadone for a heroin junkie, and so it may be for our addiction to fossil fuels. Our planetary methadone, Schneider said, may be geoengineering — or the attempt to replicate the effect Mount Pinatubo had on the climate in 1991.In the course of a long weekend in 1991, the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo volcano injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to temporarily reduce the sunlight reaching the earth's surface by about 10%. As a result, global temperatures dropped by an average of 0.5 degrees C over the next 18 months. Turns out the lesson nature taught us that weekend has not been wasted; it may help us combat global warming./.../
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