Billionaire Bill Gates has a crazy idea how to stop man made global warming by pumping millions of tonnes of chalk dust into the earth’s stratosphere to block the sun. It’s a plan that scientists are calling insane.
Apparently, Gates has decided he knows what’s best for the world.
The Daily Mail explains:
The first test of a project backed to spray millions of tonnes of chalk into the stratosphere, in an attempt to ‘dim the sun’ and cool the Earth, could happen in June.
Harvard University experts will test the system by sending a large balloon 12 miles above the Swedish town of Kiruna and have it drop 2kg of chalk dust into the stratosphere.
The aim of the estimated $3 million mission, backed by billionaire Bill Gates, is to have the chalk deflect a portion of the sun’s radiation, stop it from hitting the surface, and cool the planet.
The idea has been heavily criticised since its inception, with project director Frank Keutsch even calling the need for this scale of geo-engineering ‘terrifying’.
And experts have warned that the unusual technique could be disastrous for weather systems in ways nobody can predict.
There was an interesting study published in the peer reviewed journal, Astrobiology, by a group of astronomers looking for planets ideal for life.
But before they could do that, the group had to first determine what the ideal planet was. They concluded that the ideal planet for life was 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than earth’s current temperature. READ: Study Finds Ideal Climate for Life Is Five Degrees Warmer than Present
And we already have data on what happens when we block the sun’s rays. That took place when the Tambora volcano located in Indonesia erupted in April 1815.
The eruption spew so much ash into the atmosphere blocking the sun that it turned summer into winter causing mass starvation as far away as Europe as crops failed.
CBS explains:
Because Tambora ejected sulfurous gas that generated sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, which block sunlight, the eruption created a year without a summer, leading to food shortages — people were eating cats and rats — and very general hardship throughout Europe and eastern North America,” said Stephen Self, an adjunct professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley and an expert on volcanoes.
READ: 200 years ago: A volcano that blocked out the sun
Ironically, the Tambora eruption resulted in the creation of Frankenstein.
Sciencing explains:
Areas that were hit particularly hard by the effects of the Tambora eruption were New England and Europe. Frosts and snow in June, July and August destroyed almost all crops and farmers were forced to slaughter animals due to the lack of corn crops. The widespread crop failures in Europe occurred just as it was beginning to recover from the effects of the Napoleonic Wars and Ireland experienced its first great famine. India’s monsoon season was interrupted and China also felt the effects through devastating floods.
Frankenstein
Due to the bad weather near Lake Geneva that the explosion caused, the poets Byron and Shelley spent time indoors with friends, proposing each person write and present a ghost story. Shelley’s wife, Mary came up with Frankenstein, a famous work of literature that was created as an indirect result of the Tambora eruption.
OpentheWord.org 