As futile efforts to maintain global heating at 1.5 degrees C give rise to the reality of an apocalyptic future, ideas of intervening in climate systems are being widely funded by governments, foundations, and universities . This week’s search for news on the climate crisis yielded two deep dives by the New York Times into geoengineering. The Times’ Buying Time series investigates the “risky ways” nature is being manipulated to combat global warming.
In Warming Is Getting Worse. So They Just Tested a Way to Deflect the Sun, a San Francisco engineer is experimenting with a device which shoots particles hundreds of feet into the air to determine if it is possible to “consistently spray the right size salt aerosols through the open air, outside of a lab.” The end game is to change cloud composition, and thereby cool the earth’s temperature.
“Every year that we have new records of climate change, and record temperatures, heat waves, it’s driving the field to look at more alternatives,” said Robert Wood, the lead scientist for the team from the University of Washington that is running the marine cloud brightening project. “Even ones that may have once been relatively extreme.”
Brightening clouds is one of several ideas to push solar energy back into space — sometimes called solar radiation modification, solar geoengineering, or climate intervention. Compared with other options, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, marine cloud brightening would be localized and use relatively benign sea salt aerosols as opposed to other chemicals.
in a sidebar The New Climate Tech,reporter Christopher Flavelle discusses the controversial direct air capture technology already being widely funded and employed, noting:
It’s not unusual for a new technology to gain momentum before the major questions about its efficacy, safety and regulation are resolved. Who deserves the right to alter the planet, and what burdens of proof should they first meet?
Right now, there are no international standards governing these new technologies, even though they could affect the whole planet. As one professor of environmental philosophy told me, “We don’t have a great track record of sustained global cooperation.”
In another NYT piece, David Gelles asks Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?
On a windswept Icelandic plateau, an international team of engineers and executives is powering up an innovative machine designed to alter the very composition of Earth’s atmosphere.
If all goes as planned, the enormous vacuum will soon be sucking up vast quantities of air, stripping out carbon dioxide and then locking away those greenhouse gases deep underground in ancient stone — greenhouse gases that would otherwise continue heating up the globe.
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Researchers are studying ways to block some of the sun’s radiation. They are testing whether adding iron to the ocean could carry carbon dioxide to the sea floor. They are hatching plans to build giant parasols in space. And with massive facilities like the one in Iceland, they are seeking to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.
As the scale and urgency of the climate crisis has crystallized, “people have woken up and are looking to see if there’s any miraculous deus ex machina that can help,” said Al Gore, the former vice president.
Inside Climate News reports Geoengineering Faces a Wave of Backlash Over Regulatory Gaps and Unknown Risks reports on efforts to put the brakes on experimenting with the climate. Ideas like seeding oceans with iron and using aerosols in clouds to produce rain, the article says, could have negative consequences — such as drastically changing weather or further damaging the ozone layer.
Though geoengineering has rapidly advanced in the past decade, laws to regulate it have not. In the U.S., companies or individuals planning to inject aerosols into the atmosphere must submit a one-page form with the country’s Commerce Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at least 10 days before, based on a law from the 1970s (see the form here).
Considering the stakes of these experiments, critics say this is not enough.
“There’s no governance on the international level, national governance, there’s no state governance, there’s nothing,” David Bookbinder, a longtime climate attorney who previously served as Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel, told E&E News.
Currently, there is an international ban on large scale geoengineering projects, but this does not prohibit smaller ventures such as the controversial company Make Sunsets which launches weather balloons in Nevada and Mexico which emit particles to reflect sunlight.
From their website:
We deploy our reflective clouds above 12.4 miles (20km) from the Earth's surface using balloons. The reflective clouds stay up for about a year reflecting some of the Sun's rays just like the natural clouds below. Think of it as applying sunscreen spray to protect your skin from the Sun. Just one gram of our clouds offsets the warming effect of one ton of CO₂ for a year.
Atmospheric scientists link Arctic sea loss ice to strong El Niño events
A new study, published in Science Advances by researchers at the University at Albany and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China, has found that these events, which typically occur once every few years, might become even stronger due to melting Arctic sea ice.
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Rising Temperatures, Rising Prices: How Climate Drives Inflation
Climate change means extreme weather, shifting landscapes, and generally more instability. More and more, you can feel the impacts of climate disruption in your wallets. Drought is pushing up the cost of candy and leading to shipping delays in the Panama Canal.
Globally, researchers say climate could add one percent to inflation every year until 2035. The costs of car insurance, health insurance and property insurance are rising. And whether it’s tea in the morning or wine in the evening, disrupted climate patterns and extreme weather are making certain foods more expensive.
A First Step Toward a Global Price on Carbon
It didn’t make many headlines, but last week, at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization, something potentially world-changing happened.
The United Nations agency, which regulates the shipping industry, essentially committed to creating the world’s first global carbon price.
“I’m very confident that there is going to be an economic pricing mechanism by this time next year,” Arsenio Dominguez, the Secretary General of the maritime organization, said. “What form it is going to have and what the name is going to be, I don’t know.”
The proposal would require shipping companies to pay a fee for every ton of carbon they emit by burning fuel. In other words, it’s a tax.
Homeowners Say Climate Change Is Destroying Their Home Values
U.S.homeowners are worried that climate change is impacting the values of their houses amid elevated insurance costs across the country fueled by the increased frequency of natural disasters.
Forty percent of homeowners who have had to file insurance claims say that climate change is affecting their home values, according to a survey from Insurify. Overall, 25 percent said climate change is responsible for bringing down their property values, while 60 percent said the opposite.
Stop saying climate change will destroy the world. The truth Is far scarier
Perhaps unfortunately, the evidence tells us not that climate change will lead us to a single cataclysmic point at which all humans, or even all life, will go extinct (although some species certainly will). In all likelihood, there will be life on Earth for a very long time — and we should be very, very concerned about the quality of those lives. The global temperature is going to rise, many coastal areas will go underwater, and there will be more and more extreme weather events. It’s important to realize that mankind isn’t going to die off before things go from bad to worse: Many people will be alive and forced to endure the conditions our species has created.
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