Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
The Earth is overheating, despite what some twits in Washington say. We know how to stop the rise in average global temperatures. We may even know how to lower those temperatures somewhat. So why are we not doing what we know how to do? Because an international cabal of fossil fuel companies are conducting massive campaigns to keep the gravy train going until the last molecule of coal, oil, and methane has been wrested from beneath the surface of the Earth and burned.
Geoengineering is often suggested as a way to address the problem, but it is like putting a Band-Aid on a melanoma. A [recen…
Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
The Earth is overheating, despite what some twits in Washington say. We know how to stop the rise in average global temperatures. We may even know how to lower those temperatures somewhat. So why are we not doing what we know how to do? Because an international cabal of fossil fuel companies are conducting massive campaigns to keep the gravy train going until the last molecule of coal, oil, and methane has been wrested from beneath the surface of the Earth and burned.
Geoengineering is often suggested as a way to address the problem, but it is like putting a Band-Aid on a melanoma. A recent report by the Royal Society in the UK calls it the “least bad” solution to global overheating, which assumes the best solution — transitioning to a world powered by zero emissions renewable energy — just ain’t gonna happen.
Geoengineering Options
The forms of geoengineering currently receiving significant attention from the scientific community include stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening, both of which involve reflecting some of the sun’s energy back into space.
In its report, the Royal Society says, “The influence of SAI on the climate is currently much better understood than MCB, although climate effects of both methods are less well understood than greenhouse-gas driven climate change. The primary source of evidence for the effect of SRM comes from computer-based climate models, which represent a subset of the same models used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of future climate change. These models are supported […] by understanding of real-world analogues to SAI and MCB, such as volcanic eruptions or sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping.
“If deployed in an informed and globally-coordinated way, SRM could ameliorate many, but not all, of the adverse impacts of climate change. *However, if deployed without due diligence, SRM could exacerbate regional climate change *(emphasis added).”
SAI involves injecting sulfur dioxide high into the upper atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect observed after major volcanic eruptions such as Mt. Pinatubo and Krakatoa. However, it would not address the primary cause of an overheating planet — using the atmosphere that sustains us all as a toilet for the waste products of fossil fuels.
Cloud Brightening
The second type of geoengineering under consideration is marine cloud brightening, where salt particles produced from seawater are placed into the lower atmosphere. They would allow water vapor to condense and form clouds that would then reflect sunlight. This already happens today when the exhaust emissions from ocean-going ships lead to ribbons for clouds in their wake.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the effort to clean up shipping emissions is a reduction in the number of those ribbons of clouds the cleaner ships leaves in their wake. Fewer clouds mean more global heating rather than less. In this case, the law of unintended consequences hits especially hard.
Covering Up The Problem
Any geoengineering scheme would only mask the effects of spewing billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It should also be noted that the fossil fuel industry has absolutely no intention of paying the trillions of dollars it will cost to do this over a period of decades, another example of how the vaunted capitalist model privatizes profits while socializing costs.
“There is robust evidence that globally-coordinated deployment of SRM could reduce global mean surface temperature — and associated impacts such as sea level rise, wildfires, and extreme precipitation, and so mask part of human-induced climate change. Significant uncertainties remain in how much cooling would be achieved for a given deployment of SRM,” the Royal Academy report said.
In non-scientific jargon, the message here is that geoengineering will only work if nations cooperate in the effort. Looking around this week at the scores of countries who have chosen not to participate in the COP30 climate conference in Brazil, the likelihood of such global cooperation is about the same as whales learning to live on land.
Betting The Earth And Everything On It
The Royal Society report then goes on to explore some of the possible downsides to geoengineering:
“There are limits to the extent to which climate models can predict, with confidence, regional climate change, with or without SRM. This is particularly so for SRM given that relatively few models have been used to simulate its effects. SRM could exacerbate rather than ameliorate (emphasis added) regional changes in climate, such as patterns of rainfall change, and it is uncertain which regions would be so affected.
“The duration of SRM deployments required to reduce global temperatures to a given target level would be unknown when any deployment starts. It would depend on future greenhouse gas mitigation measures and uncertain aspects of the climate system, but could be many decades or even centuries.
“The short atmospheric lifetimes of SRM aerosols means that maintaining their cooling effect would require regular replenishment of the aerosols to mask the climate effect of long-lived greenhouse-gas emissions. If deployment of SRM were halted, or significantly reduced, the climate would return to close to its non-SRM state in one to two decades. If the SRM-induced cooling was substantial, the resulting rate of change of temperature would likely have strong impacts.”
Translation: We don’t know if this will work, but let’s all jump over the cliff and try to figure it out on the way down.
We Can’t Stop Once We Start
Once geoengineering is begun, there is always a chance that some jackass like the current US president will come along and mandate the participation of a major country be halted abruptly. If greenhouse gas emissions have not been reduced substantially when that happens, there would be a termination shock of rapidly rising temperatures within a couple of decades, The Guardian reports. The result would be severe effects on people and ecosystems that are unable to adapt quickly.
“This is not a question of whether [solar geoengineering] is safe, as it is clearly not without risks,” said Prof Keith Shine, at the University of Reading, who led the report. “However, there may come a point where those risks are seen to be less severe than the risks of insufficiently mitigated climate change.”
Rogue Actors
Scientists have many concerns about how geoengineering schemes would be carried out. If sulfur dioxide injection into the stratosphere is only carried out in the southern hemisphere, that could cause North Atlantic hurricanes to increase in frequency and intensity. Deployment in only the northern hemisphere could lead to droughts in the Sahel region of North Africa, while deployment only in the tropics could cause droughts in the Mediterranean.
Marine cloud brightening in the southeast Atlantic alone could result in the die back of the Amazon, which in turn would release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A similar deployment in the eastern Pacific could result in a huge La Niña, which would have enormous global consequences.
Who makes these decisions and what happens if policies change in one major country, as tends to happen in the US every election cycle? “You would not want it to be done by a single rogue actor” who thought they were acting in their own best interests by trying to reduce temperatures in one region, said Prof Jim Haywood at the University of Exeter, part of the Royal Society team.
We Can’t Science Our Way Out Of This Mess
At CleanTechnica, we have covered this topic on multiple occasions. Earlier this year, Michael Barnard did his best to debunk a proposal by an outfit called SilverLining that is backed in part by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Ventures. “SilverLining exemplifies a persistent and problematic tendency within climate advocacy — prioritizing speculative, hypothetically disruptive technologies at the expense of rapidly deploying proven solutions,” Barnard thundered.
“As the climate emergency intensifies, the stakes of this preference become ever clearer. SilverLining’s promotion of geoengineering initiatives such as solar radiation management and marine cloud brightening reinforces the dangerous myth that humanity can technologically innovate its way out of the climate crisis, effectively providing a tempting ‘get out of jail free card’ for policymakers hesitant to confront fossil fuel dependencies.”
A writer I hold in the highest esteem reported earlier this year on Stardust, an Israeli organization headed by the former head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. Does that raise the specter of using geoengineering for military purposes? Yes, it does.
Are there any national leaders in the world today who might want to inflict some pain on other countries? We can think of a dozen or so right off the bat, starting with the US, which has never been shy about using its power to punish those it sees as enemies. Switzerland is an advocate for studying geoengineering technology, while the US and the EU have quietly agreed to study the idea.
The issue always comes down to political will. We know what must be done, thanks to the work of Tony Seba and Mark Z. Jacobson. But the debate keeps getting twisted by the fossil fuel industry, which constantly dangles visions of sugar plums before our eyes to calm our fears and delay effective action. We can grow more kelp to absorb carbon dioxide or make clean fuels from algae.
The Carbon Capture Hoax
Then there is the carbon capture hoax. It’s not that carbon capture might not work; it’s just that it will be decades from now before it is ready and commercially viable. In the interim, another 100 billion tons of toxic crud will be pumped into the atmosphere. So, by the time it is ready, most humans and other species alive today will be exterminated in the name of shareholder value. Carbon capture also does nothing to address methane pollution.
The virulent push for fossil fuels by the US government today and the timid half measures by the EU are proof positive that humans have no intention of cleaning up the mess they have made. If we are pinning our hopes of survival on geoengineering, we have already signed our own death warrant.
Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Advertisement
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy