Many people start taking drugs in hopes of improving their physical or mental health somehow, whether they take statins to lower their cholesterol or cocaine to lower their inhibitions.
Geoengineering, too, appears to have some immediate rewards. This process uses technology to manipulate our climate system – a bit like playing God – in a way that proponents claim will reduce the effects of global warming.
One method of geoengineering that gets a lot of buzz is stratospheric aerosol injection, which entails introducing aerosols into the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight back before it reaches the surface of the planet. This, in theory, could cool the planet much like what happens following volcanic eruptions.
However, there’s always a catch. Just like statins sometimes can lower your cholesterol but may also cause brain dysfunction and raise your risk of diabetes, some researchers have shown that applying geoengineering in one hemisphere can cause serious damage in the other one.
In simulations, they found that although using stratospheric aerosol injection in North Atlantic storms might decrease the tropical cyclone activity there that can lead to major hurricanes, it will raise the chances of drought in Africa at the same time. The reverse is also true: Injecting aerosols over the southern hemisphere of Earth would reduce drought significantly in some areas of Africa but the frequency of tropical storms would rise dramatically in the Atlantic Ocean....read more>>>>....