Forests in the desert: the answer to climate change?
Climate change could be cancelled out in a staggeringly ambitious plan to plant the Sahara desert and Australian outback with treesSome talk of hoisting mirrors into space to reflect sunlight, while others want to cloud the high atmosphere with millions of tonnes of shiny sulphur dust. Now, scientists could have dreamed up the most ambitious geoengineering plan to deal with climate change yet: converting the parched Sahara desert to a lush forest. The scale of the ambition is matched only by the promised rewards – the scientists behind the plan say it could "end global warming".The scheme has been thought up by Leonard Ornstein, a cell biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, together with Igor Aleinov and David Rind, climate modellers at Nasa. The trio have outlined their plan in a new paper published in the Journal of Climatic Change, and they modestly conclude it...
Read the whole article on The Guardian - Science
More from The Guardian - Science
Related
- The green Sahara, a desert in bloomTue, 30 Sep 2008, 10:07:38 EDT
- World needs climate emergency backup plan, says expertFri, 7 Nov 2008, 14:56:35 EST
- Discovery of a type of aerosols from Sahara which will be useful to study climate changeFri, 3 Oct 2008, 12:08:24 EDT
- Desert dust alters ecology of Colorado alpine meadowsMon, 29 Jun 2009, 17:29:37 EDT
- Microsoft scientist highlights urgent need for new computer models to address climate changeThu, 12 Jun 2008, 14:23:00 EDT