Global warming, some have argued, can be reversed with a large-scale ‘geoengineering’ fix, such as having a giant blimp spray liquefied sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere or building tens of millions of chemical filter systems in the atmosphere to filter out carbon dioxide. But Richard Turco, a professor in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member and founding director of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment, sees no evidence that such technological alterations of the climate system would be as quick or easy as their proponents claim and says many of them wouldn’t work at all. Turco will present his new research on geoengineering - conducted with colleague Fangqun Yu, a research professor at the State University of New York-Albany’s atmospheric sciences research center - today and Thursday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco. ‘We’re talking about tinkering with the climate system that affects everybody on Earth,’ said Turco, an atmospheric chemist with expertise in the microphysics of fine particles suspended in the atmosphere. ‘Some of the ideas are extreme. There would certainly be winners and losers, but no one would know who until it’s too late. ‘If people […]