History Tells Us That Artificially Cooling The Planet Is a Bad Idea
Lessons Learned from the Year Without a Summer
What if we had a year when the planet never really got hot, and summer never came around? For many people plagued by record-breaking temperatures and persistent heatwaves, something like that sounds like a godsend. The idea is so appealing that some (mad) scientists and funders have toyed with the idea of altering Earth’s atmosphere to shed a few degrees and cool us down.
For some, climate change is an existential crisis that warrants the most extreme measures to try and combat. The idea is if we do not slow the rate of warming, or cool the planet, then the world will eventually become uninhabitable. For those who subscribe to this way of thinking, artificially cooling the planet sounds like a good idea. Knocking a few degrees off the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space sounds like a no-brainer.
So, what could possibly go wrong?
For students of history the answer is a lot. A lot of things can go wrong.
Nature has already given us a picture of what can happen if the Earth is unnaturally cooled. Perhaps it gave us a warning or a portent of the future for this very moment.
