Geoscale interventions 'possibly less risky than inaction'

Scientists have claimed that geoscale interventions to affect climate change may well be less risky than continued inaction.

Environmental analysis published in a special geo-engineering edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A claim the focus on long-term emissions targets are harmful and ignore the importance of current air monitoring and emission trends.

Professor Brian Launder, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester and co-author Professor Michael Thompson, wrote: "Alarmed by what are seen as inadequate responses by politicians, for a number of years some scientists and engineers have been proposing major 'last-minute' schemes."

He added that, if properly developed in advance, such schemes could be available for rapid demployment if general concern regarding climate change was upgraded to recognise its imminent, catastrophic and potentially irreversible.

The Kyoto Protocol commits 37 industrialised countries and the EU to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent against 1990 levels by 2012.