Is the prospect of cooling the planet through geoengineering an alternative we should consider?

No

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by Jimmy Nightingale

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It is 6am and the first streaks of crimson stain the horizon. The electricity was out again last night and the man had forgotten about the odds and evens power rationing system. The 31st of the month was always a contentious time of the month and perhaps the authorities had finally decided to adopt the sensible approach and cut the power completely for the day. What really annoyed the man though was that he had slept in because the power outtage prevented his alarm clock from working.

He swore. He only had a few minutes before the sun hefted its bulk into the dawn sky and already he could feel the heat of the new day leaching through the window glass. Time enough to lower the insulation shields, but he would have to hurry. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't do what most of his neighbours did and leave the shields permanently in place. He knew the answer, he didn't want to feel like a caged animal and the bit of respite of night allowed some of the heat trapped inside his apartment to radiate back out into the air.

He raced around, winding the handles to lower the shields into place. Five windows, five minutes. The man breezes through the first four, their bulk clattering in the window tracks before eventually slotting into the bottom grooves with an faint whoosh. The final window is not so quick to obey his bidding. He should have done this one first, it is on the eastern flank of the apartment and will bear the full brunt of the sun's fury. This is visible in the slight warping of the shield's track on this side and he puts his weight into turning the handle to negotiate the bend. With some grunting and a lot of sweat, the man eventually succeeds and the shield slots home.

He sinks to the floor, but on one of the apartment's internal walls. The outer walls, though double insulated and designed to reflect the heat, still soak it up and he wants to take advantage of the last vestiges of coolness before braving the day. Within a couple of hours the house will be unbearably hot, like living inside an oven, and he wonders what the heat toll will be today. Heat exhaustion is now responsible for more deaths than cancer and heart disease combined. Air conditioners are rationed to one hour per day and are hard-wired to kick in at 3pm.

He would love to take a shower, like in the old days of his childhood, but that is no longer possible. Fresh water is rationed and only available for drinking. The salt water showers are no more than a dribble out of the faucet and he loathes the way the modified soap and shampoo make his skin feel. Sticky. And the salt leaves his eyes feeling red rimmed and raw. In any case, he would only have to put on the same clothes that he has worn for the past week and that would kind of defeat the purpose. The man preferred to align his personal hygiene routine with the permitted laundry cycle. Clean body, clean clothes, or as clean as it was possible to be nowadays, and feel briefly like the man he once was, if only for a few hours.

This doesn't sound very pleasant, does it?

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is correct, we can expect average temperatures by the end of the 21st century to be between 1.8 and 2.9 degrees Centigrade higher than they are at present. This is based on the low emissions scenario and scientists are already suggesting that we have moved beyond the goalposts where stabilising temperatures within such a range is possible. The high emission scenarios are much bleaker, projecting a world totally unlike what we are used to with temperatures between 2.4 and 6.4 degrees Centigrade higher than now.

If you live in a cold climate, say Minneapolis or Anchorage, that might sound appealing, but this warming is a very simplistic view of the future. It fails to take into account what it means for the rest of life on this planet, nor what it would mean for the average person. I've attempted to provide a glimpse of what 3 degrees might be like. Sadly, not much research has been undertaken to explore this possible, or should I say, likely, future in depth. I have therefore applied my own interpretation to the only detailed analysis of which I am aware, this being Mark Lynas' excellent, yet profoundly frightening, work "Six Degrees".

How do we prevent this future from occuring?

The best way, in my view, is to pump substantial funding into research that will move us away from our reliance on coal and oil for our energy needs. Toward a fuel source that is both clean and renewable. The means is already available by way of concentrated solar, photo-voltaic solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and hydro for our electricity generation and it is only a matter of time before we can achieve fully electric motor vehicles with an acceptable range or vehicles powered by something else entirely (hydrogen holds some promise here). Sadly, it is time that we are running out of, mainly because of the feedback effects once atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations pass a certain unknown threshold. These feedbacks serve to accelerate the process and could make it unstoppable. I also believe that we currently lack the political will to make the sweeping changes necessary to tackle the problem.

Failing that, geo-engineering has been touted as a possible solution. What geo-engineering is modifying our physical environment to negate the effects of this climate change. We know from the climate record that temperatures fell between the 1940s and 1970s because of the cooling effects of sulphate aerosols. Industrial processes pump enormous amounts of gases like sulphur dioxide into the air. In addition, volcanic eruptions do the same thing and Mt Agung's eruption in 1963 was a very large one. Sulphate aerosol particles in the atmosphere serve to cool our climate by scattering the light from the sun and reflecting its energy back out into space. The only problem with using sulphate aerosols is that they have the unfortunate consequences of being only a short term solution and the even more dire issue of eventually returning to us in the form of sulphuric acid. As you can probably imagine, this is not good and those of us who were around in the 1970s remember a nasty little thing called "acid rain" that wreaked havoc throughout the world and led to Clean Air legislation through Europe and North America.

It should be possible in theory to introduce some similar particulate into the atmosphere that would have a similar cooling effect without the nasty side effects. Even better, if they could somehow combine with carbon dioxide to reduce the concentrations in the atmosphere. If either is possible, the solution has not yet been discovered and, even if a suitable aerosol particle was available or produced, we would have the problem and the uncertainties associated with increasing levels of greenhouse gases. This would mean increasing levels of particulates to cancel out their effects. Additionally, unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, sulphate and other aerosols only remain there over much shorter time scales, like weeks or months. There is also considerable uncertainty over the interaction between aerosols and clouds.

One of the less than brilliant ideas along these lines was put forward by Professor Paul Crutzen. Crutzen is a Dutch chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the cause of the hole in the ozone layer. His idea was to send hundreds of rockets loaded with sulphur into space and to somehow deposit these loads as a thin layer of sulphur "sunscreen' in orbit around the earth. The orbit would have to be infinitely precise as objects put into orbit have a habit of returning from whence they came. Not surprisingly, this is not considered a feasible solution.

The other popular geo-engineering idea is to seed the oceans with something that will stimulate plankton growth. The idea is that as the plankton grow, they absorb carbon dioxide and convert this into something benign, the more plankton therefore, the more carbon dioxide that can be sequestered. Australian engineer Professor Ian Jones suggested dumping huge volumes of nitrogen rich fertilisers, namely urea, into the oceans to achieve this. In theory, this again sounds good until we understand that this has only been undertaken to date on a conceptual level in a laboratory in ideal conditions. The ocean is infinitely more complex and the biological and ecological impacts are a big unknown. The main concern, apart from the lack of published research supporting the usefulness of this approach, is that the move could back fire, big time. Critics believe that the natural upwelling of nutrients could trigger algal blooms that are both toxic and release nitrous oxide, which is a more powerful greenhouse has than carbon dioxide.

There are a whole range of other ideas, from fleets of ships that continually spray a fine mist into the air to trigger cloud formation to sending huge mirrors into orbit around Earth to reflect the energy of the sun back out into space. Quite frankly, they are the stuff of science fiction and, while Jules Verne's and Arthur C Clarke's science fiction writings were prescient, the big problem issue in my view is that we are artificially trying to manipulate our environment to sustain an unnatural and out of balance way of life. The consequences of these manipulations defy the natural order of things, have unknown and possibly more disastrous consequences that what they are trying to prevent. Australians are very familiar with the brilliant idea of bringing in Bufo Marinus, also known as the cane toad, to control cane beetles and protect our sugar cane crops. Unfortunately, they multiplied very rapidly, migrated beyond their intended area of influence, spreading disease and being too effective in competing with native species for food, causing the demise of many of these native species.

In my view, the whole concept of geo-engineering is one of political expediency. A convenient way of adapting our environment to continue a lifestyle that is at odds with this natural order of the planet on which we live. The sensible approach, and the one least likely to have grave consequences is for us to adapt our lifestyles so that this balance is restored. Work with nature instead of fighting it, because as Xerxes once found when he tried to hold back the tide, Nature is not one to mess with and invariably wins.

A sobering footnote is the failed Biosphere 2 project. The idea was to create a model self-contained and self-sustaining closed system in which humans could live, ostensibly as a precursor to establishing colonies on other planets or the Moon. It tried to replicate the complex interaction of life sustaining systems on which we rely for our existence and failed dismally. Oxygen levels began to fall, carbon dioxide levels fluctuated wildly (and dangerously) and it could not produce enough food to sustain its inhabitants. It was also not self-sustaining in energy terms. There were later calls of cheating and the project was generally labelled a success only from an engineering perspective. In scientific terms, Biosphere 2 was an abject failure.

I'll finish with a quote:

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority" - Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of EB White, 1977

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