Dusting Up

Since there is no prospect of any effective measures being taken to prevent further climate change, a Harvard research team is taking the sensible step of experimenting with one possible method of mitigating the likely effects. The scientists will suspend a balloon twelve miles above the ground and use it to spray particles into the atmosphere, hoping thereby to reproduce the effect of a volcanic eruption: the débris from Mount Pinatubo in 1991 blocked out enough sunlight to cool the planet by half a degree for eighteen months. If the experiment works, the scientists have only to present the results in terms that will catch the political imagination: think of the potential for attitudinal readjustment in Washington should it happen that climate change can be halted with exactly the tonnage of atmospheric fallout that would result from the nuclear obliteration of Pyongyang, Tehran and Beijing.