a little more about . . .

waiting to fix the climate

Most climate scientists agree that we have enough evidence, despite remaining uncertainties, to start taking precautions now. The longer we wait, the more damage we'll be dealing with:

• Greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more. A sizeable chunk of what we emit today will still be around when our great grandchildren are growing up. Even if we were to stop all emissions today, the world will continue to warm from the gases we've already added to the atmosphere. Adding even more could push some ecological systems beyond the point of recovery.
  
  
• Scientists have studied technological fixes, such as shading the planet from some incoming sunlight. But it's not clear whether those technologies would work. Even if they did, they could cause environmental havoc, such as damaging the ozone layer or leaving some parts of the world with too little sunlight or not enough rainfall to grow food. We're already conducting a dangerous experiment by warming the climate. There may be other risks we can't anticipate from trying to artificially cool it.
  
  
• Blocking the Sun's energy without decreasing our greenhouse gas production won't eliminate the damaging chemical effects of carbon dioxide. The more carbon dioxide the oceans absorb, the more acidic they become, and this change is killing coral reefs and other marine life.
  
  

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