Changing Sky Color to Prevent Global Warming

Sulfur would be added to jet fuel to change the color of Earth's sky and reflect sunlight back into space.

A climate change activist who was voted “Australian of the Year” in 2007 has proposed a radical scheme to reverse global warming by injecting an element into the atmosphere that would change the color of Earth’s normally blue sky.

Tim Flannery, an adjunct professor at Macquarie University, made the proposal at a sustainability conference in Canberra.

He advocates generating a process called “solar dimming” in which vast amounts of sulfur would be injected into the atmosphere in order to repel the sun’s rays.

Flannery says the most cost-effective way to deliver the sulfur into the atmosphere would be to add the element to jet fuel.

“Everything’s going in the wrong direction at the moment, timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing,” Flannery said.

The injection of sulfur into the atmosphere was one of several actions he believes are needed to save the planet from a climate catastrophe.

Flannery admits no one knows if there would be any negative consequences of putting such a vast amount of sulfur into the air.

Photo: Sreedhar Yedlapati - iStockphoto
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