Does geoengineering/climate engineering (in the form of altering our atmosphere on a global scale) hold the promise of successfully mitigating climate change?

When I first heard about geoengineering a few years ago via Technology Review, I dismissed it as outlandish and dangerous. After all, we have a bad track record of altering our world on large scales in detrimental ways. Then a few months ago, I attended a talk by David Keith that completely changed my mind. Given the current and future extent of climate change, putting sulfur compounds into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight may be viable and even desirable.

Tomorrow, Alan Robock of Rutgers University shares some views on taking on climate change with climate change during his talk at Harvard entitled “Smoke and Mirrors:  Is Geoengineering a Solution to Global Warming?” Whether geoengineering ends up providing a solution that we implement or not, it’s great that we’re exploring and discussing the possibilities it offers.