Geoengineering: A Horrible Idea We Might Have to Do

At the end of the 21st century, humanity is desperate. Decades of heat and drought

have

led to unusually low harvests, while warming oceans produce fewer fish each year. Millions of people are starving in the tropics and wars over resources are causing millions to flee north. As things rapidly deteriorate, out of desperation, the nations of the world decide to adopt an emergency plan... In fact, it is far from the truth that such a terrible scenario will happen. But the failure of world leaders to effectively fight climate change makes this possibility possible. Therefore, in the near future, it may be necessary to try something radical to slow rapid climate change:

geoengineering

.

These are interventions of such enormous scale that they can undo centuries of human behavior. Or it could make things worse than they already are. What is

geoengineering

? Is it really an option? What if things go wrong? Geoengineering methods range from the fantastical, like building giant light sails in space, to the crazy, like creating clouds with salt or feeding the oceans iron to fuel the growth of trillions of algae cells. In this video we will focus on an intervention that we can witness in life: the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere. It is a complex term that means spraying substances into the atmosphere, at high altitudes, to keep the sun away.

Keeping the sun away CO2 does not heat the planet on its own, almost all of Earth's energy comes from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Approximately 71% of this energy is absorbed by the Earth's surface and atmosphere. This absorbed energy is re-emitted in the form of infrared radiation. And CO2 can capture this infrared radiation and keep it in the atmosphere for some time. You can compare this effect to being under the covers in the morning. Even in a very cold room, your body emits infrared rays and the air between your body and the blanket traps them, creating a warm and comfortable feeling.

One way to cool the planet would be to prevent our energy from being trapped on our planet. This is already happening naturally. About 29% of the solar radiation that falls on Earth is reflected back into space by shiny surfaces such as ice, desert, snow or clouds. More reflection, less energy, less heating. We can look to nature for inspiration: especially Mount Pinatubo in 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. In addition to the massive destruction and death toll of around 900 people, scientists

have

also noted its strong impact on the global climate. The explosion spewed millions of tons of particles and gas high enough to reach the stratosphere, where they remained suspended for some time.

Of interest to geoengineering is sulfur dioxide. An invisible and smelly gas. High in the atmosphere, this gas formed a droplet of sulfuric acid, which mixed with water and formed huge clouds. These coatings reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by about 1%. The global average temperature fell 0.5°C. It took three years for this cooling effect to disappear. Humans can mimic this process by shooting sulfur particles directly into the stratosphere. According to some scientists, it can be surprisingly easy to do and we don't even need much new technology to do it. Compared to rapid climate change, this could be quite cheap, according to a study.

A small fleet of specialized planes could take off once a year and distribute the aerosols along the equator from where they would spread around the world. Projections suggest that injecting between five and eight megatons of the substance per year would reflect enough sunlight to slow or even stop global warming. This gives us precious time to move away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, it can have some unpleasant side effects. There are many potential problems with aerosol injections: rainfall patterns can negatively affect agriculture and lead to famine. Billions of people could be severely affected by this. Furthermore, after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, the acid/water plumes not only cooled the surface, but also heated the stratosphere.

It turns out that acid is bad for the ozone layer and the ozone hole over Antarctica is the largest it has ever existed. Injecting sulfur particles over decades can have a similar effect. Scientists have already suggested using a combination of different minerals that could have a less damaging effect on the ozone layer, but more research and experimentation is needed to be sure it could work. But even if we don't damage the ozone layer, there are other risks. Politicians and industry can use this method as an excuse to delay the transition to a zero-carbon economy. Although geoengineering has slowed global warming, humans are still adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

More CO2 in the air means the oceans absorb more CO2, making them more acidic. This is already starting to be fatal for giant ecosystems like coral reefs. And the longer this lasts, the more serious the effects will be. But it gets worse: when we start injecting particles into the atmosphere on a massive scale, we may have to do it for a long time, that is, we may face a termination shock. If humanity continues to enrich the atmosphere with CO2 and at the same time prevent the planet from warming by blocking solar radiation, it means we are sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Once we stop geoengineering, the natural cycle will begin again and the Earth will warm again. After several decades of artificially keeping our planet cold by releasing massive amounts of CO2, the Earth will warm much faster. A temperature increase that would take 50 years today could occur in just 10 years. In the short term, such a temperature shock would disrupt all of Earth's major systems to such an extent that it would be impossible to adapt over time. The worst case scenario would be terrible famines and rapid destruction of ecosystems. Humanity could survive, but those who survived would live in an unknown and hostile world.

And the best-case scenario is that geoengineering could buy us an important decade after the world finally wakes up to the current threat of rapid climate change. A time when we can transition our economies and even remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Perhaps with technologies that we will discuss in a future video. Conclusion: Geoengineering is a scary concept. This is not a solution to climate change and may even be a good excuse for the fossil fuel industry to delay the end of the fossil fuel era. In recent decades, geoengineering has become so controversial that many scientists have stopped experiments needed to better understand it.

But opposing geoengineering in vain is not a short-sighted attitude. The sad truth is that we are already practicing geoengineering. If we add about 40 billion tons of CO2 every year, we are testing how quickly the world will change. This test will be really exciting. We hope we never have to use geoengineering. But if we have to do it in the future, we have to do our scientific research. We have to be prepared for it. Or an alarmed humanity may mistakenly press the self-destruct button. You probably won't have to do it yourself, but who knows! Just in case, we better improve your scientific knowledge.

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