A Garden Hose Can Continue Keeping World Climate On Target

I was looking at this visualization of countries trying to reduce their CO2 emissions and it immediately reminded me of the segment I saw on Good Morning America (summary here). It was last Friday when I watched one of the authors of SuperFreakanomics claim to have a creative solution to global warming…a garden hose. According to Dubner and Levitt, this simple and cost effective garden tool can cool the planet and offset global warming.

Folks, as it turns out, they call this MacGyver-esque solution geo-engineering. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo was an inspiration to this. They say the event was a stratospherically efficient coolant as evidenced by the two-year drop in the earth's temperature. So they thought, why not simply replicate Mt. Pinatubo's cooling haze by spritzing the Earth with colourless, liquefied sulphur dioxide by means of a giant hose.

Levitt was also on NPR discussing this garden hose to the sky chapter of their book. He made the following two points which, I think, go to the heart of his thinking on this issue: "Why would anyone be against a cheap fix?" and "No problem has ever been solved by changing human behaviour.” He also alluded to the switch over from horse-driven transport to internal combustion engines a hundred years ago as an example of a 'cheap technological fix' to the horse manure problem.
 

Overall, I think this is an interesting concept, although I tend to agree with critics and scientists that there is a danger of oversimplifying the issue of global warming. For example, the authors don't talk about the real environmental concerns that come with sulfate injection to the stratosphere. But there are serious and specific concerns. One of these would be the possible change in precipitation that this procedure could cause. Apparently, this could lead to severe droughts that would damage crops and limit drinking water (more about that here).

Although I was really impressed with their out of the box thinking, there are defintely a lot of points to consider with Dubner and Levitt's take on geo-engineering. I definitely forsee research and planning on this type of solution as part of our future efforts to stop global warming.

What do you guys think? Have you heard of any other geo-engineering ideas or proposals to effect climate change? I want to hear about it!