Thinking outside the box
Geo-engineering could mitigate expected climate change damage with few or no side effects
The recent eruption of the Hunga volcano about 30 kilometers southeast of Tonga’s Fonuafo’ou island raised the eyebrows of climate scientists around the globe. The volcano sent hundreds of thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which can have a cooling effect on Earth.
We have seen this before: Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 — by far the largest volcanic eruption to affect a densely populated area in the 20th century.
Producing avalanches of hot ash and gas, the eruption killed hundreds of people, displaced hundreds of thousands of others, and damaged thousands of homes.
As well as causing devastation, the volcano also affected the climate. Its eruption injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to temporarily reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface by about 2.5 percent.
As a result, temperatures around the globe dropped by an average of more than half of a degree Celsius over the following 18 months.
While it is unlikely that the volcano eruption in Tonga in January was strong enough to have a significant cooling effect, scientists concerned with global warming are wondering if they could mimic a volcano’s effect on the climate — cooling the world at a very low cost and without the carnage — with so called geoengineering.
It can be done with something called stratospheric aerosol injection, which involves spraying tiny particles such as sulfur dioxide into the upper layer of the atmosphere to act as a thin reflective barrier against incoming sunlight.
Scientists have come up with a number of proposed delivery mechanisms to get the sulfur dioxide where it needs to go — from powerful artillery guns and long pipes suspended by high-altitude balloons to aircraft that disperse particles as they fly.
The idea of pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper layers of the atmosphere understandably worries many people.
Some worry that darkening the sky in one hemisphere would have huge, unpredictable effects on tropical climate patterns, and perhaps lead to more droughts in the Sahel region. Others fear that it will hamper photosynthesis.
Obviously, there is a lot that we do not yet know about this technology and how it would work on a planetary scale. But there are reasons why we should start researching geo-engineering technologies.
Crucially, it is the only known approach that allows us to make dramatic cuts in global temperature at low cost.
Research by Copenhagen Consensus shows that just $9 billion spent building 1,900 seawater spraying boats could prevent all of the temperature increase projected in this century.
This is a tantalizing possibility
when we consider the $60 trillion in damages that unmitigated global warming would cause in this century. Moreover, geo-engineering would allow us to change the global average temperature very quickly.
Any standard fossil fuel-cutting policy will take decades to implement and half a century to have any noticeable climate impact. Instead, just like Mount Pinatubo, geo-engineering can literally reduce temperatures in a matter of weeks.
Geo-engineering is the only way to halt warming quickly. Potential pitfalls are clear, but if faced with a genuine catastrophe, we would certainly want this option.
Of course, just avoiding the temperature rise would not solve every climate change-related problem. But remember, no realistic climate policy promises to solve all (or even most) climate change problems.
If geo-engineering could avoid a significant fraction of expected climate change damage with few or no side effects, it would be a phenomenally useful intervention.
Given that we are contemplating carbon-reduction policies that will cost trillions of dollars yet do little to help, paying just $9 billion to fix a significant part of the climate change problem would leave an enormous amount of money to do good in other ways.
Some researchers insist we should not even investigate geo-engineering, because it poses unacceptable risks. But we will never know if we do not investigate.
And because geo-engineering is so cheap, there is a large risk someone — a single country, a lone billionaire or even a determined NGO — would try it anyway.
We should not commence geoengineering while the technology is not ready and we do not yet know enough about it. But we cannot afford to forgo the research. It might be Earth’s best backup plan.