A few weeks ago I described a continuum sliding from global warming to climate chaos to geoengineering and ultimately to planet-scale engineering. Now we’ll look into what some of those geoengineering proposals might be, why they might or might not work, and what the potentially catastrophic results could be—whether or not we try to solve global warming.
To begin with, let’s stipulate that there is no real debate over whether global warming is occurring or whether it is human-caused. Virtually all of those who best know the issues agree on the consensus. (If you want to cast up phony arguments or cherry-picked stats from denialist groups in the comments, don’t bother because they won’t be published. We’re here to talk about solutions.)
The only genuine arguments at this point are about what happens next:
- How fast will the planet keep warming?
- How soon will glaciers disappear and famines ensue?
- How quickly will the ice caps melt?
- How bad will climate chaos become?
- What steps should we take, and when?
Take a look at this:
Red peaks shown on the chart above are the warm “interglacial” periods between ice ages. They are short spikes normally lasting about 10,00 years. We’re living in one now, the Holocene Era in which human civilization has developed.
But what stands out are the levels of CO2 (atmospheric carbon dioxide). Because humans have been burning fossil fuels, starting with coal during the Industrial Revolution, and then increasingly oil and gasoline, we’re pouring far more of this greenhouse gas into the air than has been there for millions of years. The green line—CO2—is almost off the chart, and we must expect the red line—temperature—to keep following it upwards.
Indeed, it already is:
As you can see, average global temperatures are rising very quickly, in geological terms. And the results of that will not be pretty. IEET Fellow Jamais Cascio puts it this way:
Of all of the big drivers for the next two decades, climate chaos and resource collapse have the most complex interaction. On the surface, it’s clear that each can make the other worse: agricultural collapse can push people to tear down rain forests faster (both reducing a carbon sink and putting even more carbon into the air by burning); greater storms and droughts can produce massive refugee movements, overwhelming local resource bases; drivers and industry looking for an alternative to oil pushing for biofuels, driving up the cost of food; desperate communities choosing survival over the careful maintenance of ecosystem services. It’s a truly vicious cycle.
He has also said:
Feedback effects ranging from methane released from melting permafrost to carbon emissions from decaying remnants of forests devoured by pine beetles will boost greenhouse gases faster than natural compensation mechanisms can handle.
The accumulation of non-linear drivers can lead to “tipping point” events causing functionally irreversible changes to geophysical systems (such as massive sea-level increases). Some of these can have feedback effects of their own, such as the elimination of ice caps reducing global albedo, thereby accelerating heating.
Because of the long, slow nature of carbon cycles, no matter what we do, we are committed to warming the planet for at least two to three decades beyond when we stop adding to greenhouse gases.
So, what to do?
Apart from drastically reducing our worldwide carbon emissions—now there’s an novel approach—the most immediate, obvious, and currently feasible way of attacking the problem is to inject massive amounts of sulphate particles into the atmosphere in the hope of reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth. The only problem with that nice easy answer is that it almost certainly won’t work as desired.
Not only do we not know anywhere near enough to be sure this would be effective, it’s also likely to create bigger problems than it solves. Until much more thorough studies are conducted and definitive conclusions reached, it’s a bad idea.
As I snarkily suggested above, an even more obvious and immediate approach would be to collectively and cooperatively work to reduce global carbon emissions to a level far below what they are today. But the problem with that idea is that it’s a) not by itself going to prevent more global warming, and b) simply not going to happen.
Even if we were to stop all carbon emissions immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise by 0.1°C per decade, as we experience the full effects of the carbon already in the atmosphere. This is due to environmental inertia—a mechanism by which the environment stores up part of the energy of generated by greenhouse gas emissions, only releasing it to the atmosphere later on.
Sadly, even if we do everything we possibly could do now in a preventive mode—shut down every power plant burning oil or coal, totally stop driving cars and trucks (except solar electric), stop flying jet airplanes, use only sailing ships, stop heating homes and buildings with oil, stop burning wood, etc.—global warming would continue, glaciers would melt, storms would worsen, droughts would ensue, crops would fail, sea levels would rise, and generally things would be far worse at the end of the 21st century than at the beginning.
Of course, that scenario assumes that we would not be able to invent and deploy new technologies to help provide clean, sustainable energy, to mitigate the damages of climate change, and perhaps even to begin removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere; but let’s also remember that without burning fossil fuels, it would be very difficult to continue today’s research toward those worthy goals.
And on my second point above—that it’s simply not going to happen—if you can envision a plausible scenario in which all the world’s leaders of governments, corporations, tribes, and families are going to agree with the drastic lifestyle changes that would be required, your imagination is vastly greater than mine.
According to some, then, we are reduced to looking at more extreme and possibly more risky geoengineering schemes. Whether it is a single giant sunshade in space, or trillions of small spacecraft orbiting our planet, or even—once molecular manufacturing has been achieved—huge quantities of tiny transparent computer-controlled balloons with shifting mirrors inside floating high in the atmosphere, at least one crazy-sounding idea almost certainly will be attempted at some point.
I’m not ready yet to accept that we must try something like that. But we might. First, though, here is what I recommend:
- It is abundantly clear that we—Western democratic nations, and others if they will join in—should mount an aggressive, targeted, Apollo-like program to convert as much energy production as possible from fossil fuels to clean, renewable sources.
- We need deep investments in wind, solar, tidal, wave, and geothermal energy infrastructures. One often overlooked part of the solution is concentrated solar thermal power, and new generations of nuclear energy production should be considered as well.
- Substantially increased funding for emerging technologies that have significant potential for both sustainable energy and climate change remediation is a necessity. Ideally, this should be conducted in an internationally collaborative public-private partnership. At the same time, major funding for studies to determine both environmental and societal impacts of such technologies is also imperative.
- What we must not do is sit around and wait and debate and delay while CO2 levels grow past the 400 ppm mark over the next six or seven years. They are going to grow to that level and beyond no matter what we do, of course, but our best hope to slow the rate of increase and keep them below 450 ppm is to get working immediately.
We—the whole human race—should have started in earnest long ago. But now, we can’t afford to wait any longer.
IEET Blog