Geo-engineering "EMPOWER IAS"

In news:

Geoengineering has steadily shifted over the last few decades from the margins towards the mainstream of climate action discourse.

What is Geoengineering?

Geoengineering is the technique designed to tackle the effects of climate change directly, usually by removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air or limiting the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface.
It involves deliberate planet-scale interventions to counteract global warming.
Methods to remove CO₂ from the air: Increasing the capacity of trees and plants to absorb CO₂ from the air, burning large quantities of wood in power plants with carbon-capture technology, making and burying large amounts of charcoal to lock carbon into the soils, grazing cattle in a way designed to turn grasslands into giant carbon sinks, fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, etc.
Methods to limit amount of sunlight: Placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight away from the Earth, firing sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, using unmanned ships to increase above-ocean cloud cover by spraying sea water into the air, etc.

The chemicals used in Geoengineering projects are given below.

Some of the benefits of using Geoengineering methods are given below

Could reduce the increase of carbon dioxide thereby reducing global warming.
Cost incurred would be affordable.
Stop the ice loss at the poles, since the possibility of cooling the poles is more than tropical areas.
Toxic chemicals are not required.

Some of the disadvantages associated with Geoengineering are listed below.

Climate engineering aka geoengineering is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, usually with the aim of mitigating the adverse effects of global warming.
It is a deliberate, large-scale intervention carried out in the Earth’s natural systems to reverse the impacts of climate change.
Its techniques fall primarily under three categories: Solar radiation management (SRM), carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and weather modification.
Solar radiation management refers to offsetting the warming effect of greenhouse gases by reflecting more solar radiation (sunlight) back into space.
Carbon dioxide removal refers to removing carbon dioxide gas (CO2) from the atmosphere and sequestering it for long periods of time.

What are the specificities of geoengineering?

Solar geoengineering or ‘dimming the sun’ by spraying sulfates into the air to reflect sunlight back into space;
Ocean fertilization or the dumping of iron or urea to stimulate phytoplankton growth to absorb more carbon;
Cloud brightening or spraying saltwater to make clouds more reflective and more.
CDR technologies being proposed as a means to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions by mid-century involve deliberate intervention in the natural carbon cycle Carbon capture and storage (CCS), direct air capture (DAC) and Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)

India and Geo-engineering

We had experiments such as LOHAFEX (an ocean iron fertilization experiment to see if iron can cause algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere).
LOHAFEX was an ocean iron fertilization experiment jointly planned by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India and the Helmholtz Foundation in Germany.
The purpose of the experiment was to see if the iron would cause an algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Debate over its advocacy

Mainstream activists are advocating solar geoengineering as a means to buy “humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.
Opponents of have numerous foundationally solid arguments. They warn against “taking our ecosystems even further away from self-regulation”.
They argue that such actions distract attention from the need for deep cuts to gross emissions which is achievable with the right political will and resource mobilization.

Consequences of geoengineering

Conducting tests for geoengineering is a fallacy since these methods need to be deployed at a scale large enough to impact the global climate system to be certain of their efficacy.
It is a large risk to take without knowing the potentially harmful consequences of such a planetary scale deployment.
Some of these consequences are already known. Solar geoengineering, for example, alters rainfall patterns that can disrupt agriculture and water supplies.
Injecting sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere above the Arctic to mimic volcano clouds, for example, can disrupt the monsoons in Asia and increase droughts.

Geopolitical concerns

Manipulating the climate could have the same geopolitical function as nuclear weapons.
Even before geoengineering is deployed, it may be used as a threat that will likely incite countermeasures.
Say if governments ever gain control of changing the course of potentially damaging storms, diversions that direct storms toward other countries may be seen as acts of war.

What lies ahead?

We all know that climate change is growing more rapidly than anticipated earlier.
Hence we should combine it with a programme of deep decarbonisation. This would help implement a “clean-up process” that will hasten our return to a more habitable environment.

Scientists agree that natural climate solutions such as forest sinks cannot be relied upon for the scale of mitigation needed.
Therefore, for a socially just application of such technologies for carbon capture with geological sequestration offers ‘negative emissions’.

Related Posts