How Geoengineering shows us the way to a cooler planet
If it isn’t clear by now, Climate change is the biggest threat our species has ever faced.
The recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, paints a grim picture of a future where our planet is too warm and the weather too violent, for civilizations to continue to exist as we now know it. If we continue to do nothing, or take half-measures that make us feel good (I drive an Electric Car!) without systemic change, we are, in a word, doomed.
(Here I must once again note that it’s only the human species and our civilization that’s doomed. The planet will continue along on its merry way. Many other species will join us, like corals and, sadly, domesticated dogs, but the planet itself won’t notice we’ve gone.
Most traces of our civilization [except our space probes], will be consumed by erosion, earthquakes, volcanos and asteroid strikes within 50,000 years or so.)So, what can we do? Well, the UN report has lots of suggestions, but most of those involve international cooperation, personal sacrifice, the immediate end of fossil fuels and, um, capitalism.
(Well, okay. Not the end of capitalism, just a radical reworking where the good of the many outweighs the needs of the…oh. Sorry. Yeah, it means the end of capitalism.)
Since that’s not going to happen, what else can we do? Well, if comic books have taught me anything, it’s that to solve big problems, you’ve got to think big. Which brings us to the real-life mad science of Geoengineering.Geoengineering is engineering on a global level. The goal of which is to mitigate the effects of climate change and to either halt, or even reverse, the rise in global temperatures.
There are currently two main approaches to this under consideration.
Plan 1: Suck It Up, Buttercup
Temperatures are rising because of the increase in “greenhouse” gasses that our civilization puts into the atmosphere. These gasses (methane and carbon dioxide are the worst) trap more heat from the sun, hold it close to the planet and contribute to the rise in overall temperatures.
One proposed solution is to capture these gasses and sequester them somewhere other than the atmosphere. Now, the earth already has some systems for doing this: Trees, the oceans, and the earth itself.
Sadly, we love to cut down trees to build things, and the oceans have reached their holding capacity for these gasses. As for the earth, while it’s buried its carbon goodies deep underground, our species has decided that we’re going to dig it all up, burn it, and throw it back into the atmosphere.
That means we’ve got to come up with some other way to capture those gasses. Trees are the obvious choice, but at this point we simply can’t plant them fast enough. So, that means we have to build machines to do it. (Solar powered machines, hopefully.) Many designs exist, and some actually work, but none can currently scale up to the size needed to remove enough of these gasses before it’s too late.
Plan 2: The Future’s So Hot, We Gotta Wear Shades
If removing the gasses won’t work, what about removing the source of them, the humans! Wait. No. I meant the Sun. Yes. The Sun.
While we can’t remove the Sun, we can hide from it, or reflect more of its life-giving, death-dealing rays back into space.
White roofs would help, a little. Bigger ice caps would be brilliant, but those are vanishing due to the very problem we’re trying to solve. So, some scientists are pondering a couple of really radical solutions like making clouds whiter and more reflective.
Yep, you can do this by seeding clouds with chemicals which I’m sure would have no side-effects or unintended consequences. Also, clouds tend to vanish, so this would be a never-ending process. There are several ideas on the table similar to this, but they all pale in comparison to the really big idea that’s literally “out there”…
Plan 3: A sun shade in space!
Yes. We may end up having to put a massive, remotely controlled umbrella in space to manipulate the amount of sunlight reaching our planet.
It would work, but it would be a massive undertaking, requiring mining materials from the moon and sustained international cooperation unlike anything seen before, similar to the cooperation needed to act on the options outlined in UN report.
Also, you just know the Penguin is going to take control of it and hold us all hostage. So, like I said, we’re doomed.
Steven W. Disbrow is the proprietor of “Improv Chattanooga” on the South Side of town. He also creates e-commerce systems and reads comic books when he’s not on stage acting like a fool.