After spending the last hundred years pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through automobiles and smokestacks, can we cool the atmosphere by pumping in sulphur dioxide? Mt. Pinatubo did it. But if we could do it, could we end global warming or would we be encouraging more burning of fossil fuels? A few prominent scientists have taken this problem on, including Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen, who is most familiar with the effects of chemicals on our atmosphere from his studies of ozone depletion. Crutzen and others have suggested that by pumping sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, we could shield the earth from the sun's rays in much the same way that sulphur dioxide erupted from Mt. Pinatubo did in 1991. This week's issue of Nature covers the prospect of geoengineering to mitigate global warming in the article "Is This What it Takes to Save the World?":

"A little geoengineering might make an equivalent objective a lot more achievable.... Imagine an aerosol effort that starts fairly soon and is quickly ramped up to a Pinatubo's worth of sulphates being injected into the upper atmosphere every two years, before being phased out completely after 80 years. The resulting cooling effect would allow carbon dioxide emissions to keep climbing for a few more decades without the world warming any more than if they leveled immediately."

That's right, kids. According to this article, one Mt. Pinatubo every two years for 80 years would give us another "few decades" to keep driving Hummers before carbon dioxide build-up would be too much for one more little Mt. Pinatubo to handle. Let's get back to working on those fuel cells.