Washington, United States
the billionaire American technology entrepreneur, Bill Gates, is funding an ambitious geoengineering project launched by scientists from the Harvard University aimed at releasing tons of non-toxic calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere, to reduce the amount of sunlight and thus counteract the effects of global warming.
Various studies related to geoengineering projects solar have stagnated in recent years, due to criticism of the unpredictable dangers they could pose to being applied to this magnitude.
However, given the risk of climate change, the Stratospheric Controlled Disturbance Experiment (SCoPEx) plans to continue studying the feasibility of spraying dust from calcium carbonate (CaCO 3) to the atmosphere by means of balloons.
LEA: A man spends three months hiding at an airport for fear of covid-19
The intriguing and promising project, funded and accompanied by the founder of Microsoft, is developing technology that would potentially reflect sunlight off the planet and thus cool it.
In June of this year, SCoPEx is expected to send a balloon, with scientific objectives, 20 km high near the city of Kiruna (Sweden), to experience the maneuverability of equipment which will be used. If successful in testing, the project would move to a second stage releasing a small amount of compost.
There are critics of this type of scientific proposals who claim that this would lead to extreme changes in climate patterns, as well as an argument to encourage the disproportionate emission of polluting gases in the atmosphere.
The professor of applied physics at the Harvard University, David Keith, has discussed the issue and argues that there are “many real concerns” about geoengineering as no one knows what could happen until CaCO 3 is released and its effects are studied, which could be good or bad for the Earth.