Royal Society highlights the dangers of tampering with the Earth's climate

The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering* technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, the latest Royal Society report has found. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has contributed to the conent.

The report (published today,1 September, by the Royal Society) found that unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary if we are to cool the planet. Geoengineering technologies were found to be very likely to be technically possible and some were considered to be potentially useful to augment the continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions.  However, the report identified major uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts.

The complete report will be presented at the Academy's energy conference Energy 2050 the 19 October.

Link to the conference: www.energy2050.se