Gadgetory

we've arrived at a frightening point in the debate over climate change research shows that even sharp cuts in fossil fuel use would no longer be enough to avoid environmental catastrophes likely including widespread famine mass extinction and hundreds of millions of climate refugees but despite these growing risks world leaders and politicians continue to resist hard commitments to change or deny the problem even exists it'll get cooler it'll get warmer to cold weather enter the climate hackers a growing number of scientists and researchers who are taking matters into their own hands they're exploring ways to seize control of nature itself to reverse climate change by altering clouds changing ocean chemistry making the atmosphere more reflective and other forms of what's often called geoengineering it sounds an e to some and reckless to others but with millions of lives and entire ecosystems in the balance ignoring any opportunity to limit these mounting threats could prove to be the most reckless action of all so doing this could cut the actual risk we care about of climate change cut them say in half this century at a low cost and that's a big deal Harvard scientist David Keith has a cheap and simple plan to prevent the earth from overheating as global warming takes off in the decades ahead the most basic idea is by making the earth a little bit more reflective by reflecting away some sunlight you can reduce some of the warming and other climate changes that come from the build-up of long-lived greenhouse gases like co2 the way to do this that scientists understand best is to fly planes into the stratosphere where they would spray particles such as sulfur dioxide over time these particles would combine with oxygen and water in the atmosphere to create sulfuric acid which traps water vapor that would otherwise evaporate small droplet of water vapor like a cloud droplet would reflect sunlight back to space and cool the earth just like a thin cloud dumps done on a large enough scale it could offset much of the warming and store this century and Keith estimates it could be done for a few billion dollars a year that sounds like a big number until you consider the trillions and estimated climate change damages annually Keith didn't invent this concept known as solar radiation management but he's arguably done the most work to date figuring out how it can be done safely and effectively using sophisticated computer modeling he's looked at various particles in various quantities to test the climate reaction far more research is needed before anyone actually deploys this kind of technology at full scale but Keith argues it's time to move from lab research to limited trials in the real world it might or might not make sense actually do solar to measuring at this point all we're talking about is research but if it makes sense to do it it might make sense to do it quite soon wall we're also cutting emissions because it actually reduces the risk substantially we do know the basic science is sound because Nature has already done the field work major volcanic eruptions in the past have markedly cooled worldwide temperatures by blowing tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky the most often cited example is the massive 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo which ease global temperatures by a fool degree Fahrenheit the following year but there are known risks to mimicking this natural phenomena the downside of shooting software dioxide into the sky is that it also eats away at the ozone layer as it is the world has been struggling for decades to patch a gaping hole in this protective layer caused by earlier chemicals used in things like refrigeration and hairspray some research has also suggested solar radiation management would reduce rainfall in certain areas and that could have disastrous effects on food production according to will Burns co-director of the Washington climate geoengineering consortium I have some serious concerns about solar radiation management approaches because whereas they they could potentially substantially cool the planet they also could have some extremely serious negative impacts that would make the you're worse than the disease you could potentially alter precipitation patterns which could shut down the monsoon in South Asia on a regular basis it could create large droughts in sub-saharan Africa it could create die backs in the tropical Amazon region in addition geoengineering at the scale of an entire planet presents thorny international political challenges another concern with solar geoengineering is whose hand is going to be on the thermostat it might be that Russia or Canada might prefer to see a little more global warming than in places like in India or equatorial countries that gives potential for international conflict and a new nuclear age international conflict can be very dangerous Keith's first came across early proposals for solar geoengineering as a doctoral student in physics at MIT in the late 1980s he had grown frustrated with his fields obsession with abstract issues and became drawn to the dawning real-world problem of global warming he's published a series of papers on the subject throughout a rapid rise in the academic world that landed him at Harvard in 2011 where is now a professor of applied physics in public policy much of Keith's recent work has focused on limiting the negative effects of solar radiation management last year for instance he and colleagues found that swapping software dioxide for other materials such as alumina or diamond dust with significantly less than the ozone impact in the case of diamond dust you would also significantly increase the cooling effect Keith also says that research following the work Byrne sites has found that solar geoengineering could actually increase food production in part because it reduces heat stress on crops if you take any modern climate model and put in a moderate amount of solar to missionary not enough to calm stayed away all the effects of co2 which would almost certainly be crazy but maybe and enough to cut that in half so imagine if a gradual ramp in the amount of solar geoengineering that cut the rate of warming in half if you do that in a model essentially every single part of the world is as far as we can tell better off as the threat level climbs other scientists and policymakers are also calling for more geoengineering research jane long a senior consulting scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund notes that major climate projections show that global temperatures this century will rise well above the 2 degrees Celsius threshold that researchers have long warmed we shouldn't cross the only models that predict the globe will avoid this danger zone includes some form of climate intervention which could include the method keith has in mind or new ways of removing carbon dioxide from the oceans and atmosphere I think that means we better know more about intervention we need to be able to decide whether these things are effective whether they're advisable whether it's a good idea to do them and whether they're actually doable if there's ever a real climate crisis the pressure on a politician to do something now that can act within a year can be really intense and so it's important that we do the research now so that when politicians are faced with this question they have good scientific information and are not just engaged in wishful thinking Burns for his part remains skeptical that lab research and field trials will ever tell us enough to be able to safely roll out the technology at full-scale we still won't know what its real impacts are until we fully deploy but if you fully deploy of course and you shut down the monsoon then it's going to have dire implications Keith is the first to say that solar geoengineering isn't a magic bullet it can't address all the impacts of climate change and nothing about it means that we don't still have to transition to a clean energy system as quickly as possible there's a line of argument that says we can never understand Soler's you know assuring perfectly we can never predict exactly what will happen so we can never do it I think that's absurd it really misunderstands the choice that humans face both uncertainties matter so you can't just focus on the uncertainty about solar gene sharing because you've got the uncertainty about co2 and that's the thing that we know is a big risk but I believe it's my job as a scientist both to warn about the foolish choices the worldwide make if it sees this as a get-out-of-jail-free card but it's also my job to say what the science seems to say well the science seems to say is that moderate amounts of solar geo reduce climate change in almost every way that we can project