| Proposal |
Benefit |
Drawbacks |
| Planting trees |
Trees work as carbon sink. If grown, trees will provide fuel for electric powerplants that would otherwise use coal. |
Massive area of land would be required. Many trees would require fertilizer and irrigation, which might deplete scarce water supply and increase pollution. Importing non native trees attract non native insect and other life that would disrupt the native ecosystem.
Though not visualized by many conservationists, the trees would cause temporary CO2 flooding during prolonged rainy, cloudy and winter sunshine less days. |
| Stimulating phytoplankton growth by dumping iron in to ocean |
More phytoplankton could help reduce global warming as some CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere is absorbed by plants,that eventually sink in the sea bed. |
The plan would require fertilizing large area of ocean and effort would probably not last for long. Excess phytoplankton growth would likely disrupt ocean food chain or cause other harmful effect. Bacteria feeding on dead phytoplankton might remove large amount of oxygen from the water.
Such micro organisms will also emit more respiratory CO2, especially during sunshine less periods. |
| Adding soot or dust to the atmosphere |
Soot and dust would help reduce global warming by blocking some sunlight. |
The effect would not last long and dust would require constant supply. Dust particle in the atmosphere might provide additional surface for ozone destroying chemical reactions, leading to greater ozone depletion. The effect would not be uniform around globe. |
| Launching sunshield in the atmosphere. |
The sunshield could help slow global warming as the new clouds block and reflect some sun lights. |
To be effective the sunshield would be so large that they would be very expensive, difficult to launch, and difficult or impossible to control. |
| Adding sulphur particles to the air above ocean to make cloud formation there. |
The particles could help slow global warming as new particles block and reflect some sunlight. |
The sulphur particles might wash back to the earth in form of acid rain, killing marine life and harming plants. The effect would not be uniform around globe. |
| This method, “ Process for eradication of polluting gas” ** |
It is simple, feasible, eradicates CO2 instantly and converts in to inert materials. It is applicable for eradication both at site and off site polluting gases. It can be applied without use of extra power, electricity, and at remote sites. Various manifestations are devised to eradicate the polluting gas on land terrains forests, in lakes, ponds, marshy land, glaciers ecosystem which can be easily accessed. opensky and enclosures such as cave, wells, aero plane, cabins, basements rooms and cinema halls etc. |
It has no foreseen limitations and side effects.
It can be applied as per need after noticing any occurrence of concentration becoming a killer gas.
Further, this method eliminates several limitations associated with other geo-engineering methods describe in this table. |
• The source of information given in table for other than the last method are based on information given by Baskin, 1996.