Ms. Chonghaile said,
"Carbon dioxide removal is seen as the more reasonable option – even if the
various techniques used today are generally small-scale, energy-intensive
and expensive."
Well, a good answer would seem to be to seek a CO2 removal method that
is large-scale, little or no energy needed, and inexpensive. And, if it
fosters peace and comfort in the world, that would be a plus.
On Sat, Jun 4, 2022 at 9:04 PM Geoeng Info <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-increasing-research-into-stopping-climate-change/
>
> Earth’s last rays of hope?
>
> *Emissions and temperatures continue to rise, leading to increasingly
> radical research into limiting climate change. But are they safe?*
>
> Parched birds falling from merciless skies; glaciers melting and creating
> thousands of lakes; more than a billion people at risk of heat-related
> illnesses; scores of heatstroke deaths; endless power cuts. It’s the stuff
> of nightmares. Or, reality for millions in India and Pakistan these past
> weeks.
>
> The heatwave suffocating south Asia is a terrifying reminder of a
> dystopian future that many believe is now too close for comfort. Scientists
> have blamed the scorching conditions in India and Pakistan on climate
> change. So what do we do?
>
> World leaders have committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, but
> action lags pledges, and we are not going fast enough to limit the rise in
> global temperatures to below 2C, never mind to keep it under 1.5C, as
> agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In fact, scientists recently
> warned that there is a 50:50 chance of global average temperatures rising
> to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels within the next five years.
>
> And for those reading this article and thinking this is all happening
> “over there”, remember last summer: wildfires raging from Athens in Greece
> to Marmaris in Turkey; temperatures hitting 48.8C on the island of Sicily;
> floods killing hundreds of people in Germany.
>
> As the question of how to rein in climate change becomes more urgent, the
> answers become more radical.
>
> For many researchers, the most controversial form of solar geoengineering
> – stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), or dimming the sun by creating a
> barrier in the stratosphere using aerosol particles – is a do-or-die roll
> of the dice that would cool the planet and, crucially, buy more time to cut
> emissions.
>
> Everyone agrees that SAI is risky and that we don’t know what the
> consequences of such climate manipulation would be. What divides people is
> the question of whether or not we should even study the idea.
>
> Advocates say the risk is worth it. Opponents counter that it will set the
> world on a slippery slope to the unknown. The argument itself is blocking
> serious attempts to find out the answer and the clock is ticking.
>
> “My biggest fear is that we slither into solar geoengineering unwittingly,
> without having done the hard work, and that could play out in various
> different ways,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia
> Business School and author of *Geoengineering: the Gamble*. “One scenario
> might be basically to not do the research … and then somebody somewhere is
> going to pull the trigger… Say we have yet another heat storm above a
> subcontinent of a billion people – like we literally had these past weeks
> with a tenth of humanity … What else would it take? Would it take
> two-tenths of humanity? Does it have to affect India and China?”
>
> Geoengineering, or the use of new technologies and strategies to
> intentionally manipulate the planet’s environment, is not just about
> dimming the sun. Within this broad category, there are two main types of
> interventions – removing CO2 from the air and solar geoengineering,
> reflecting sunlight away from the earth.
>
> Carbon dioxide removal is seen as the more reasonable option – even if the
> various techniques used today are generally small-scale, energy-intensive
> and expensive. Solar geoengineering is regarded as more speculative.
> However, deflecting the sun’s rays doesn’t have to be high-tech – in Peru,
> scientists painted a mountain white to reflect more heat and protect
> glaciers, and buildings have been covered with special paint for the same
> reason. Other ideas being considered include installing mirrors in space,
> growing crops genetically modified to be brighter, spraying clouds with sea
> salt to make them brighter and putting mirrors in deserts.
>
> But the idea that has aroused the most controversy is SAI. On the face of
> it, it’s relatively straightforward – a fleet of specially adapted planes
> or rockets would spray compounds like sulphur dioxide or calcium carbonate
> into the air to reflect the sun’s rays back into space. It could be a quick
> fix: temperatures could come down within months and years, but the problem
> is that although some research is being done, it is fragmented and efforts
> to carry out real-world experiments can face intense opposition.
>
> It’s not so much that we have to test the theory. We already know the
> underlying premise is sound: when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted
> in 1991, it expelled millions of tons of sulphur dioxide into the
> stratosphere, cooling global temperatures by around 0.5C for almost two
> years.
>
> It’s the longer-term side-effects that are the great unknown.
>
> The idea of injecting particles into the stratosphere edged into the
> mainstream when Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen wrote
> a landmark essay on SAI in 2006 that broke the taboo many felt existed
> around the subject.
>
> But although Crutzen wrote that the idea should not be considered lightly,
> he faced a backlash from colleagues who worried the idea might distract
> from efforts to cut emissions.
>
> It is this concept of moral hazard – the idea that even the potential of a
> quick-fix solution will hamper efforts to cut emissions – that still
> concerns opponents of solar geoengineering.
>
> “The looming possibility of future solar geoengineering could become a
> powerful argument for energy companies and oil-dependent countries to
> further delay decarbonisation policies,” wrote a coalition of around 60
> academics in an open letter that appeared in the WIREs (Wiley
> Interdisciplinary Reviews) Climate Change online publication in January.
>
> The scientists called for a ban on outdoor experiments, implementation,
> patents, public funding and support from international institutions like
> the United Nations. They argued that artificial cooling of the planet could
> affect regional weather patterns, agriculture and supplies of food and
> water, and would be impossible to govern fairly and effectively.
>
> “Solar geoengineering is not necessary. Neither is it desirable, ethical,
> or politically governable in the current context. With the normalisation of
> solar geoengineering research moving on with rapid speed, a strong
> political message to block these technologies is needed. And this message
> must come soon,” the letter concluded.
>
> Some scientists have also suggested that solar geoengineering could reduce
> the effectiveness of solar panels, which offer an alternative to some of
> our dirtiest energy sources.
>
> Solar power now accounts for around 3% of the world’s energy supply and
> there are two main types: photovoltaic, which uses solar panels, and
> concentrated solar power, which uses mirrors to concentrate solar energy
> from a large area, creating intense heat for industrial processes or
> generating electricity – as at the molten-salt concentrated solar plant in
> Dunhuang in China, the leading country for solar power.
>
> Despite all these fears, Wagner says the idea that you can quash all
> future research is just wishful thinking. “Yes, solar geoengineering is a
> scary technology …It’s not something to joke about or take lightly, but
> none of that means we shouldn’t be doing the research,” he says.
>
> “It’s about weighing the risks of unmitigated climate change – the world
> we are heading towards – against the risks of a world that also considers
> solar geoengineering.”
>
> Opponents argue that if the SAI interventions went ahead but were stopped
> suddenly for any reason, the earth could face termination shock – a sudden,
> devastating temperature rise. A 2018 Yale study, published in *Nature
> Ecology & Evolution*, said global temperatures could soar three times
> faster than climate change in such a scenario.
>
> It’s a scary prospect, but is the alternative – that we don’t manage to
> slow global warming until it’s too late – any less scary?
>
> Dr Rob Bellamy, presidential fellow in climate and society in the
> geography department at the University of Manchester, says that banning or
> defunding research risks pushing it underground and increasing the
> possibility that a rogue leader may one day rush to use an untested
> technology – the very scenario that so frightens critics.
>
> “One of the key governance principles behind doing something like this is
> to treat it like a public good. It needs public investment, transparency,
> all those things that are much easier to get when it comes through public
> funding. If it’s done privately, you start to lose those things and it
> becomes, ironically, more likely to be the sort of thing that people who
> want to ban it are concerned about,” he said.
>
> Bellamy also notes that research doesn’t equal approval.
>
> “I’ve been very critical of the slippery slope argument. It rests on two
> key premises: first of all that by researching something you are inevitably
> going to do it, and secondly, if you do do it, the impacts will be bad,” he
> says. “Through research we may well find ways of counteracting potential
> problems, changing the trajectory of the innovation by taking into account
> these concerns that people have. So it’s definitely not a foregone
> conclusion.”
>
> Bellamy concedes that carbon capture and storage technologies – the
> friendlier face of geoengineering – are the better bet right now. That
> doesn’t, however, mean the world shouldn’t have “a kind of emergency
> backstop” in case temperatures spiral higher.
>
> “At the end of the day, I think it is very, very unlikely that we would do
> this, even with the research, but I think we need to do the research just
> in case,” he said.
>
> In its* Mitigation of Climate Change* report, released in April, the
> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said solar
> geoengineering is at best a supplement to achieving sustained net-zero
> emissions. It also noted that it could affect the spread of infectious
> diseases, alter food security, deplete the ozone layer, and even threaten
> international cooperation and peace.
>
> On removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the IPCC concluded that this would
> now be “unavoidable”, given how hard it would be to cut emissions in
> sectors such as aviation, agriculture and some industrial processes.
>
> Some companies are already involved in direct air capture, or sucking CO2
> out of the atmosphere. In Iceland, for example, Swiss-based Climeworks
> opened the world’s largest direct-air-capture plant last year to extract
> 4,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. The captured carbon is then pumped
> underground, where it is turned into stone.
>
> Bellamy, who is a member of a nationwide scientific hub looking at CO2
> removal in the UK, says these techniques have to be considered, even if
> they do face the same “moral hazard” argument as solar geoengineering.
>
> Nonetheless, carbon capture techniques do not seem to inspire the same
> level of visceral fear among members of the scientific community.
>
> But what of the public? Their consent is also needed for experiments and
> that can be an issue when it comes to researching ways to dim the sun.
>
> Last year, the world’s leading solar geoengineering research unit at
> Harvard University had to cancel an outdoor test of the grandly named
> Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, in Sweden
> because of opposition from leaders of the indigenous Saami people, who live
> in the area. The plan was to fly a balloon high into the sky, but without
> releasing any particles this time.
>
> Wagner, who was the founding executive director of Harvard’s Solar
> Geoengineering Research Programme, says the experiment would have had no
> direct environmental impact.
>
> Even if they had released sulphur dioxide, he says the direct impact would
> have been less than that caused by a commercial airliner during one minute
> of flight. “Which is another way of saying that none of this was ever about
> the environmental impact. It’s about the symbolism.”
> ------------------------------
>
> In a clear sign of the urgency and complexity of the issue, a new body –
> the Global Commission on Governing Risks from Climate Overshoot – has been
> formed to explore how to cut risks to people and nature if the world
> breaches the 1.5C limit.
>
> Led by the former director-general of the World Trade Organization and
> president of the Paris Peace Forum, Pascal Lamy, the commission is composed
> of 16 former government leaders who will study various options for tackling
> climate change, including CO2 removal and solar geoengineering. They will
> then present an integrated strategy on how these technologies could be
> governed before the UN Climate Change Summit in 2023.
>
> “All of us would prefer not to confront the consequences of insufficient
> action,” Lamy said as the commission was launched. “Importantly, we will
> continue to work towards achieving the world’s climate goals as best we
> can. But we also have an overriding responsibility to be prepared, in case
> we do not succeed.”
>
> The bleak reality is that the body’s creation is a clear indication that
> the world is ever more likely to miss the 1.5C target.
>
> “Countries’ pledges to date put us on track for 2.7C warming by the end of
> this century. It is high time to brace ourselves for this worst
> eventuality,” said Hina Rabbani Khar, minister of state for foreign affairs
> of Pakistan and a member of the commission.
>
> The new body will try to determine what information is needed to take
> rigorous and science-based decisions on whether to deploy such
> technologies, said Adrien Abécassis, executive director of policy at the
> Paris Peace Forum, which will host the commission.
>
> “They will not be looking for some kind of Plan B, or emergency solution,
> or emergency brake. That’s not the point. The question is: have we really
> considered all the possible combinations of options? It’s a kind of moral
> duty to be sure we do all we can to minimise the risks,” Abécassis said.
>
> The commission stresses that harmful emissions still need to be cut.
> Wagner agrees and believes tech must be part of the solution.
>
> “It’s like teaching your six-year-old to turn off the water while she
> brushes her teeth – because it’s the right thing to do. Acting immorally is
> bad. Do the right thing, but believing that behavioural change alone is
> going to fix (climate change)? No. How do you decarbonise your apartment?
> With new technology, with good insulation, triple-glazed windows, heat
> pump, solar pump, battery storage, the induction stove – all these elements
> are fantastic new tech for behavioural change.”
>
> In the end, Bellamy says, technology will be key. “The distinction between
> technological, social or natural solutions is pretty arbitrary. Anything we
> do involves a form of technology, even if it’s a standardised procedure…
> Technology will be at the core of tackling climate change.
>
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