Beyond mitigation: potential options for counter-balancing the climatic and environmental consequences of the rising.....
Global climate change is occurring at an accelerating pace, and the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are forcing climate change continue to increase. Given the present pace of international actions, it seems unlikely that atmospheric composition can be stabilized at a level that will avoid "dangerous anthropogenic interference" with the climate system, as called for in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Complicating the situation, as GHG emissions are reduced, reductions in the offsetting cooling influence of sulfate aerosols will create an additional warming influence, making an early transition to climate stabilization difficult. With significant reductions in emissions (mitigation) likely to take decades, and with the impacts of projected climate change-even with proactive adaptation-likely to be quite severe over the coming decades, additional actions to offset global warming and other impacts have been proposed as important complementary measures.