Journal Entry #3: Asteroid Dust

Newspaper article: Asteroid Dust Could Fight Climate Change on Earth
Article by: Charles Choi (LiveScience)

Summary of the Article

A new, “out-of-this-world” suggestion by Scotland scientists could help fight global warming. Russell Bewick, a space scientist at the University of Strathclyde (Scotland), suggests using an asteroid in space to create a dust cloud to act as a sunshade for the entire planet. This type of project is known as geoengineering. The idea of using dust clouds in space as a sunshade is not new, but the dust clouds had the risk of dispersing over time by the Sun’s radiation and gravity, as well as gravity of other planetary bodies. In order to solve this problem, Bewick suggests using an asteroid because the asteroid could create a dust cloud and gravitationally anchor the dust cloud to help cool down the Earth. Bewick said that he would never suggest geoengineering over reducing emissions, but it could buy time in order for slower-acting measures such as carbon capture to take effect.

An artist's depiction of what am asteroid dust cloud may look like
http://www.livescience.com/23553-asteroid-dust-geoenineering-global-warming.html

Analysis

Although there is some scientific jargon in this article, everyone should be able to understand this article because it explains the terms that it uses. For example the term “Lagrange point L1” is used in the article, when I read it I had no idea what it meant. Fortunately the article explains the term to you; Lagrange point L1 is the name of a site “where the gravitational pull of the sun and the Earth cancel out.” The article is unbiased because it explores both the benefits and the disadvantages of using this method to fight climate change. There are no other articles on this topic as other news sites have copied the information from this article and cited this article as their source.

Thoughts and Opinion

After reading this article, I was surprised to learn that there are ways to fight global warming other than reducing our carbon emissions. I think that the method proposed in this article is not a good one because it could cause other problems, such as a too big of a change in climate (which could possibly lead to another ice age). In addition, if something was to hit the asteroid and knock it off course, then it could possibly hit the Earth and cause massive damage to our planet.  After reading this article and thinking about the method for fighting climate change presented in the article, I think that reducing our carbon emissions is the best way of fighting and stopping climate change. A question that comes to my mind after reading this article is, when will all the world leaders work together to actually reduce and stop the effect of global warming, instead of looking for other ways and investing in other ways to solve the problem?

Link to the article: http://www.livescience.com/23553-asteroid-dust-geoenineering-global-warming.html