However, less than two weeks after the announcement, the climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics took aim at these ambitions in a new briefing titled "Why geoengineering is not a solution to the climate problem," which goes as far as recommending a global ban on solar geoengineering.
The group's briefing warns about the dangers of proceeding with solar radiation management (SRM) in particular.
The basic idea behind SRM is to release particles into the earth's stratosphere, the atmospheric layer approximately 6–30 miles above the surface, where they would then reflect some of the sun's light (and heat) away from Earth, resulting in atmospheric cooling.
Scientists to pilot geoengineering 'sun dimming' trial next year - Times https://t.co/vGyMNBpSAS https://t.co/pLe8k4jBPf— ECIU (@ECIU)1543662121.0
Harvard's scientists working on this concept point to the particles released by volcanic eruptions as real-world examples of how it might work. One such example is the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, an event which released large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.
According to NASA, after Mount Pinatubo's eruption, "Over the course of the next two years strong stratospheric winds spread these aerosol particles around the globe," which led to a temporary global cooling of about 1° Fahrenheit over the following 15 months. The Harvard team plans to investigate calcium carbonate, a common calcium supplement and antacid, as a potential particle to use instead of sulfur dioxide.
Despite this parallel, why is Climate Analytics warning against solar radiation management? For a long list of reasons, including the potential for some pretty disastrous consequences.
1. Solar Radiation Management Doesn't Address the Real Issue
Earth's climate is warming because humans are pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with carbon dioxide from fossil fuel-burning topping that list. As Climate Analytics notes, solar radiation management "does not address the drivers of human-induced climate change." Instead, the briefing says, this geoengineering approach "would mask warming temporarily" in a best-case scenario, while representing a fundamental and "potentially dangerous" threat to the earth's basic climate operations.
As Mt. Pinatubo's eruption showed, the basic concept behind the Harvard team's proposal certainly has the potential to cool the planet, but Climate Analytics notes the many sizable and unique risks to attempting solar radiation management on a long-term, global scale.
Critics of solar radiation management—and there are many—note that one of the biggest risks of this approach is that it becomes a distraction from the primary goal of decarbonizing the global economy in order to address the root cause of climate change.
A recent in-depth piece from In These Times quotes a document from the group Hands Off Mother Earth, which opposes solar geoengineering:
"Geoengineering perpetuates the false belief that today's unjust, ecologically, and socially devastating industrial model of production and consumption cannot be changed and that we therefore need techno-fixes to tame its effects."
Even David Keith, one of the Harvard scientists working on solar radiation management, shares the concern that this work could distract from the required efforts to reduce global carbon emissions.
"One of the main concerns I and everyone involved in this have, is that Trump might tweet 'geoengineering solves everything — we don't have to bother about emissions.' That would break the slow-moving agreement among many environmental groups that sound research in this field makes sense," Keith said in 2017, according to The Guardian.
After scientists' recent announcement of a very short timeline for the world to drastically cut carbon emissions, some are viewing solar radiation management as a way to allow for continued fossil fuel use while hoping for "techno-fixes" to avert global catastrophe.
2. Risks Far Outweigh Potential Reward
In a world where even predicting the weather is more difficult due to climate change, it isn't hard to fathom that changing the global climate quickly could have many unknown consequences. But as Climate Analytics points out, there are plenty of known risks and concerns surrounding solar radiation management, including the following:
Weather System Changes: According to the Climate Analytics briefing: "Solar radiation management would alter the global hydrological cycle," which means changes to global weather patterns, including monsoon activity. Tweaking monsoon activity may not bode well for many people around the world. "These [monsoon] rains not only play a vital role in food security and exports, but also provide essential water for the very large, and often already vulnerable, populations," states the briefing.
Ocean Acidification: Another negative impact of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is the acidification of the oceans. Reflecting away sunlight does nothing to address this problem fundamentally caused by excess carbon dioxide.
Global Agriculture: While increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations can be beneficial up to a point for some plants, that benefit likely would be canceled out by the reduction in actual sunlight reaching plant life, which is necessary for photosynthesis.
Decreased Renewable Energy Production: As with agriculture, lower levels of sunlight reaching the earth's surface would reduce solar power production. And changing the global climate and weather could also alter wind power potential.
3. Geopolitical and Catastrophic Risks
While purposefully altering the global atmosphere would be an unprecedented project in both scale and impact, the endeavor actually would not cost very much and could be done unilaterally by one country. Solar radiation management would likely affect different parts of the world in different ways, some positively and some negatively.
New Security Beat: Panelists Call for Creation of World Commission to Handle Solar Radiation Management https://t.co/xyoWQAyxtI— Climate Engineering (@Climate Engineering)1544193212.0
The Climate Analytics briefing highlights this potential: "SRM will strongly alter the climate system producing 'winners' and 'losers' in different regions and with different levels of deployment. It could therefore become a source of massive conflict between nations."
This potential for geopolitical conflict is one reason Climate Analytics is calling for a global ban on solar radiation management.
Another reason is because the group views the approach as a grand form of "kicking the can"—that is, the can leaking too many greenhouse gases—down the road. And once solar radiation management is deployed on a global scale, it has to continue even in the event of grave consequences because stopping the program would induce something known as "termination shock."
Climate Analytics predicts that termination shock—the result of stopping an SRM program once begun—would result in "very rapid and large-scale planetary warming" that could occur "on a timescale of months."
Geoengineering and Sun Dimming
With Harvard leading solar geoengineering field tests and the long-term support of people such as Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, the idea that "techno-fixes" will save the planet from climate catastrophe isn't going away. Especially with major media outlets such as CNN running headlines suggesting these approaches could be "the answer to global warming."
Going out for......Dim Sun? Who is joining me!!?? https://t.co/54qywPmb5F— Director Questlove (@Director Questlove)1543048346.0
The answer to global warming has been around for more than fifty years. The head of the American Petroleum Institute spelled out part of this solution at an industry conference in 1965 in which he said, "There is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out."
The solution he acknowledged then was "an alternative nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks."
While the world has far less time to act than in 1965, the solution to global warming remains more of a political challenge than a technological one.
Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.
- Blotting Out the Sun to Save the Earth? Seriously? ›
- Solar Geoengineering Might Not Work if We Keep Burning Fossil Fuels, Study Finds - EcoWatch ›
- 'Global Dimming’ Was Caused by Human Pollution, Study Confirms - EcoWatch ›
Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
By Tim Radford
Scientists in the U.S. think they may be on the track of a new kind of battery technology that could store huge reserves of energy.
One of the great problems of renewable energy generators such as photovoltaic cells and wind turbines is that they can’t respond to demand.
When the sun is out, nobody needs so much heating and lighting, so the electricity goes to waste. In theory, surplus energy could be saved for hours of darkness or when the winds drop, but at a prohibitive cost. But Michael Aziz of Harvard University in Boston and colleagues report in nature that they have tested what is, quite literally, a solution to the problem.
A common low-cost organic chemical found in crude oil and in living things could, once dissolved in water, be used to fuel a flow battery, into which surplus energy could flow when the winds are high and the sun is shining and everybody has gone surfing, and then deliver stored power when everybody goes home at night time and switches on the light and the cooking stove.
In a flow battery, two solutions of electro-active compounds are made to flow through electrodes in an electro-chemical cell: they react at the electrodes and generate electricity. A membrane separates the two solutions, but lets through charge-carrying ions.
Promising start
The strength of a flow battery is that the electro-chemical conversion hardware and the tanks in which the solutions are stored are kept separately, so that the amount of energy that can be stored is limited only by the size of the tanks.
The downside is that, until now, such systems have depended on expensive electrolytes such as vanadium dissolved in sulphuric acid or even more expensive catalysts such as palladium. Professor Aziz and his colleagues did it with a quinone dissolved in water and very dilute acids, and without a catalyst.
A quinone is a simple benzene-based compound that comes in many forms and from many sources. The quinone in the Harvard trial was almost identical to one found in the garden crop rhubarb.
The flow battery under test delivered promising power density and good current efficiency. The test kit, however was only two square centimeters. The whole process is about 1,000 times faster than the rival vanadium system, so batteries could be charged and discharged so much more swiftly. The next stage is to scale the system up, and keep it running for many thousands of cycles to demonstrate its capabilities.
Not there yet
There is a long way to go. Safety considerations remain. The chemistry, too, could be improved. The dream is of a flexible system that could be used in large projects and small.
It could sit in the basement of a home and store the energy collected by solar panels on the roof. Or buried tanks could store the surplus energy from a whole wind farm. The authors say that the use of organic molecules rather than metals holds the promise of massive electrical storage at greatly reduced cost.
“You could theoretically put this on any node on the grid. If the market price fluctuates enough, you could put a storage device there and buy electricity to store it when the price is low and sell it back when the price is high”, said Aziz.
“The intermittent renewable storage problem is the biggest barrier to getting most of our power from the sun and the wind. A safe and economical flow battery could play a huge role in our transition from fossil fuels to renewable electricity.
"I’m excited that we have a good shot at it.”
Visit EcoWatch’s RENEWABLES page for more related news on this topic.
