Geo-engineering

With climatologists like Dr. James Hansen continuing to prognosticate on increasing global temperatures, and resistance to emission-reducing strategies like carbon taxes still an issue, consumers can be forgiven for wondering if there’s anything to be done to keep Earth from succumbing to an apocalyptic climate disaster.

Certainly, there’s no shortage of ways to change fuel consumption through taxes, cap-and-trade systems for carbon credits, or even physically removing cars from roadways. They’re all being tried in a variety of ways by countries around the world, but if predictions like Hansen’s are any indication, we might also need to begin considering more drastic measures.

As the Los Angeles Times reported this week, “geo-engineering” is an umbrella term for some of the most direct means of combating global warming. Rather than trying to reduce existing emissions, though this would still remain a part of any climate change strategy, geo-engineering would essentially attempt to rewire environmental conditions.

For example, where reducing emissions would theoretically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming, American scientist Roger Angel has proposed a “sunshade” system that would deflect some of the sun’s light away from the Earth using trillion of specialized mirrors. Similarly, rather than only reducing the amount of CO2 sent into the atmosphere, Dr. Wallace Broecker has proposed that industrialized nations build atmospheric “scrubbers” to extract CO2 from the air.

Researched by institutions like The National Academy of Sciences, other geo-engineering techniques include cloud seeding, the manipulation of clouds and their attendant precipitation; stratosphere sulphur-spraying, which would mimic the cooling effect of a large eruption, like Mt. Pinatubo in The Philippines; and fertilizing large masses of phytoplankton, microscopic organisms who use CO2 in the process of photosynthesis.

Each of these ideas comes with its own potential hazards, not to mention unforeseen consequences. Huge “blooms” of phytoplankton could create their own environmental tolls, and any climate-related change is a tricky move at best, given that weather’s always been a touchy beast.

All geo-engineering techniques are, by definition, rebalancing the Earth’s ecosystem, albeit with the intention of making the Earth more livable. Whether they’ll move from the theoretical to the practical, however, remains to be seen.