A team of scientists has come up with a plan to address the climate change issue by essentially cooling down Earth’s polar regions.
According to Sky News, the scheme would involve some 125 military refueling aircraft dispersing a cloud of sulfur dioxide particles at an altitude of about 13 kilometers and a latitude of 60 degrees in both hemispheres so that these particles drift high in the sky towards the poles.
The shade created by the dispersal of just over 13 tons of these particles during summer and spring would supposedly decrease the temperature in the polar regions by two degrees Celsius.
Wake Smith from Yale University, who led the study, pointed out that the implementation of the plan in question would merely result in dealing with a symptom of climate change rather than the cause, the media outlet notes.
"It's aspirin, not penicillin,” he remarked. “It's not a substitute for decarbonisation."
Also, the plan was reportedly deemed controversial because, for example, the sheer number of aircraft involved in the operation would result in the release of greenhouse gases into our planet’s upper atmosphere.
The researchers, however, argued that only one percent of the world’s population lives in the target zone, and that the projected cost of the program would be far less than that of other means of “mitigating or adapting to climate change,” as the media outlet put it.
"If the risk-benefit equation were to pay off anywhere, it would be at the poles," Smith declared. "Any intentional turning of the global thermostat would be of common interest to all of humanity."