OVERSEAS trips may become a once-in-lifetime experience and car travel needed to be cut by 80 per cent if we have any hope of avoiding "dangerous" climate change, experts say....“The car is doomed,” Associate Professor DamonHonnery said. “Our calculations show that not even the best combination of fuel efficiency, hybrid and electric cars, alternative fuels and car pooling could provide the reductions needed to meet the 2050 targets for avoiding dangerous climatic change,” he said. "Car travel 'cut by 80 per cent'"

An article by Science Daily titled "Can We Offset Global Warming ByGeoengineering The Climate With Aerosols?" suggests scientists are seriously considering releasing sulfate aerosols in to the stratosphere to scatter incoming solar energy before it is "trapped" in the lower atmosphere by greenhouse gases. This measure would increase "global dimming" and reduce the amount of light and solar energy that reaches the planet. A related proposal is to actually burn sulfur in the stratosphere and thus create a haze that would block sunlight. A known side effect of this method is an increase in acid rain. No one knows what other side effects may result from these two measures but some scientists are so convinced that global warming is going to doom the planet that they feel any action that helps reduce warming must be better than no action at all.

Ocean iron fertilization, also known as the "Geritol solution", involves seeding the oceans with iron to increase phytoplankton populations. The thought here is that the iron will encourage phytoplankton growth and the phytoplankton will suck up the CO2 as part of photosynthesis. This proposal is thought to be one of the least expensive methods of mitigating global warming. However it is fraught with danger and irony (hah, this is the is the first time I've seen the word irony being used ironically). For one thing no one is sure if the process is safe to the environment or if iron fertilization would even work on such a large scale. It is also possible that the additional phytoplankton growth would produce enough methane (also a greenhouse gas) to offset the CO2 absorption. Oh, theIRONy ? Environmentalists and some states actually sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to get CO2 classified as a pollutant. By encouraging phytoplankton growth to use CO2 for photosynthesis they are essentially admitting that CO2 its self is a necessary fertilizer for plant life. Plants flourish under increased CO2 levels. Our current atmospheric CO2 levels is about 380ppm, millions of years ago when plant and animal life was far more abundant and diverse than it is today CO2 levels were as high as 7,000 ppm! On the good news front one company that was about to begin testing of this method, Planktos has suspended operations saying "the company has been forced to indefinitely postpone its ocean fertilization efforts once intended to restore marine plant life and generate ecological offsets for the global carbon credit market". They complained of strong opposition from environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and others for their inability to obtain investment capital. But a company called Climos just received $4 million in venture funding to plow ahead.  Read rest of story...

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