Geoengineering Climate Change
Can Humans Combat Climate Change without Stopping Fossil Fuel Use?
This essay is about some of the ways people and nations are trying to defer the effects of climate change, usually in the short term. You can skip this if you don’t believe in climate change. I will assume that people do believe in climate change for this essay. It is an easy assumption given that all but a tiny percentage of scientists who study the climate think that humans did and still do contribute to climate change.
Difference Between Global Warming and Global Climate Change
When people were first made aware of climate change, it was referred to as “Global Warming” because that term was easy to explain. However, it had the negative effect of focusing ONLY on global warming and was relatively ignored or corrupted to “prove” a point. Who can forget Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) rolling a snowball on the floor of the Senate in 2015 to “prove” Global Warming was a hoax?
The response was twofold.
First, activists tried to explain the difference between climate and weather. The difference is understandable to everyone but is still trotted out by the right every now and then.
Second, Global Warming was more correctly renamed “Climate Change.” From the standpoint of most scientists, this was not a change – albeit it seemed a change for the public.
For experts, Global Warming meant more energy was pumped into the global climate system. That energy would increase not only temperature but also increases the energy shared with other factors as well. Warmer water and air means that hurricanes and typhoons are stronger and more deadly. Warmer air increases humidity, which lowers the temperature at which people suffer harm. Warm air increases humidity while also increasing the amount of water the air contains. The result is more intense rain that is less predictable.
This terminology was a change for many people and politicians and was used to prove that scientists didn’t understand the process. This isn’t true, but it was an easy retort.
How to Slow or Stop Climate Change - while still using Fossil Fuels
The scientific community unanimously agrees that the way to stop climate change is to move from fossil fuels like coal and oil to renewable clean energy like solar, wind, and nuclear power. That is probably the future solution, but it doesn’t address the issues in the short term.
Energy production via fossil fuels is still critical to growth. And it will remain so at some equilibrium even after much of the Western world hits a carbon-neutral stance. For example, if all of North America, China, and Europe stopped purchasing oil tomorrow, the price would drop. Once the price dropped, other nations would use the opportunity to buy much cheaper oil. They would buy and use it for growth, which makes perfect sense.
Given this reality, how do we move forward to slow or end climate change?
There are two answers. One is to capture more carbon by trees and plants, or technologically capture more carbon. But forests are being cut down, and technological means are practical only at meager rates.
The second answer is using manual scientific means to reduce climate change. Scientists and activists have long pushed against human-designed “solutions.” Activists believe that sponsoring or supporting man-made solutions will just drive more fossil fuel use. It is comparable to freeways. As you add more lanes or more freeway miles, traffic will grow to use those lanes as more homes and businesses will be built along the better roads.
But we are now in “the future” where we need all the solutions we can try. And so scientists, climate advocates, and the occasional blogger have proposed solutions.
Proposed Solutions
To understand the proposed solutions, you must understand how climate change occurs. The image below shows the process. Humans are increasing the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, which in turn, captures more energy and heat in the Earth’s ecosphere. The Paris Climate Accords led each nation to decide how to lower CO2 emissions. That addresses the issue of letting more excess heat out of the atmosphere and back into space.
Aerosol Solutions
Unlike current attempts, most proposed human temporary “fixes” do not consider reducing the CO2 problem of keeping heat in. This solution assumes that we cannot affect carbon reduction in our current economic situation. The aerosol solutions address the issue of sunlight reaching the earth and getting trapped in the first place.
The aerosol solution proposes to geoengineer a solution that mimics natural actions. When there is a lot, a LOT, of volcanic activity, clouds of smoke are often released into the sky. This has the effect of lowering surface temperature drastically for a year or two. One proposal being investigated is to release aerosols, like sulfur dioxide particles, very high in the stratosphere. There, the idea is to reflect sunlight before it reaches the earth’s thick atmosphere.
Alternatively, some scientists are investigating seeding low clouds over the ocean with sea salt to make them more reflective. Then, having more reflective clouds reduces the amount of sunlight getting to the oceans, where the dark blue absorbs a lot of heat.
Neither of these solutions has ever been tried and may have unexpected side-effects. In the case of geoengineering, the threat of unintended consequences is very high. In the case of climate change, humans have constantly been surprised by unexpected side effects. For years, warming did not happen as expected, and then we found that the oceans were a massive heat sink. A heat sink that hit its limit in ways we still don’t understand.
Humans have never attempted something like stratospheric seeding. We are not sure how the stratosphere will react. We assume that sunlight would be reflected back into space, but it is also possible that the stratospheric action might create a secondary greenhouse “lid”.
As for seeding clouds, we already know of some negative effects from the seeding that was done previously. First, the chemicals used for cloud seeding are often toxic. Silver iodide, the most common chemical, can cause respiratory issues, irritate skin, and cause gastrointestinal problems. Countries have already seeded clouds to create rain, and found the process produced some random results. Rain began this way will often just move rain from one location to another to the detriment of a secondary location. We’ve never seeded clouds to make them better reflectors, so we aren’t sure what would happen.
We in America have seen the results of climate-driven rainstorms and “atmospheric rivers”. What if cloud seeding made those rivers worse? The US, a first-world nation, has problems dealing with all the rain; imagine the effect on poorer populations with less robust infrastructure.
But an investigation of this is gaining in popularity. The UN has published a story on the exploration of this topic here.
A Solar Shade
Another idea is to deploy a giant sunshade in space. This would hopefully lower temperatures by reducing the sunlight reaching the Earth in the first place. This would be a unique endeavor. This solution does not raise the same questions as atmospheric particles. The questions raised here are about our ability to do this, the possible effectiveness of a shade, and the complexity of the solution.
Some company or nation would have to deploy a space-worthy shade thousands of miles across to work. Because it is deployed in space, the affected shade areas on Earth would be much smaller than the shade deployed. The shade will be subject to harsh conditions, including collisions with objects from microscopic to relatively large. The shade must be strong enough to handle impact collisions or loose enough to let most objects pass through. There is also the idea of “solar wind.” A sunshade on the scale is necessary and would probably move of its own accord, pushed by the sun’s rays.
(Also, I personally think this is a silly idea that depends on too many variables to work.)
Why Not Try These Solutions?
Problems arise when testing the impact of these (and other) solutions. There is no way to test these solutions without deploying them on a large scale. Unexpected side effects would impact the entire world, not just the country or countries attempting to implement these solutions. Imagine India spreading particles to reduce warming in the country. The effect would not be limited to India itself. In the best case, it would affect Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and more. The worst case is that it unexpectedly reduces rainfall, starving 100s of millions of people. Or raises the temperature in India and surrounding nations.
The UN is concerned by how this actions may be taken unilaterally or by a rogue actor or nation.
Expected Impact on the World’s Population
There is another reason activists do not push this solution. Their use is an assumption that if consumers and politicians find a short-term solution, fossil fuels will continue to be used. Politicians are focused on the short term. They would champion investing and using fossil fuels over price rises or phasing out their use. We have seen this type of “temporary solution,” which has become permanent before, and it would exacerbate climate change going forward.
For example, imagine that the US spreads aerosol particles to stunt the growth of climate change in the short term. Politicians would delay phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and investing in solar and wind. Activists would fight even harder against nuclear power. All humans choose to put off painful actions if they can, even if it is better in the long term.
For the world’s population that is impacted more immediately, like low-lying islands, Bangladeshi flooding, and those affected by rampant wildfires, there is no “long-term” issue. It is happening now.
Would These Solutions Work in the Future?
No one can be sure if one of these or a different geoengineering solution will work. But as the climate becomes more deadly and extreme, some geoengineering attempts will probably occur. Only then will we find out if one of these beats the odds to become successful, and if people think of it as a only a temporary fix that will drive down fossil fuels use.