Recently, on 27 November 2014, the New Scientist has presented us a news-item: "Geoengineering the planet: first experiments take shape"written by Andy Coghlan. It is a matter of great concern. I would like to post here an old (2010) article written on this subject - it is old, but quite relevant.
Beware of Geoengineering
Recently, most probably in between March 21 and March 25, 2010, a
meeting was held near London at a Royal Society resort at Chicheley that
discussed future plans regarding Geoengineering. The meeting was held in a
suspiciously hush-hush manner – no Royal Society communiqué or news-item or
archived-material was issued at their portal till date regarding this meeting;
only one person of the press was allowed, he was Charles J. Hanley of
Associated Press; and his report was not published before another couple of
weeks! In the language of the reporter, “An Associated Press reporter was
invited to sit in on their discussions, generally off the record ….” Only about
select fifty persons were present in the meeting to decide the fate of our
world and here we must show appreciation to the reporter for his heading –
“Tweaking the climate to save it — who decides” – because of the last two words
he used in the heading.
The term – geoengineering – is not much old in usage, the term got
currency roughly in 2006-07, though in modern sense of the term geoengineering
was perhaps first used by C. Marchetti in1977 in an essay ‘On geoengineering
and the CO2 problem’ that discussed ocean-sequestering of CO2;
and later the Annual Review of Energy and
the Environment published a paper titled “Geoengineering the Climate:
History and Prospect” by David W Keith in its volume 25 of year 2000. The New
York Times referred to this term in a June 27, 2006 article and tried to
present some sort of definition – “a controversial field … geoengineering,
which means rearranging the Earth's environment on a large scale to suit human
needs and promote habitability.” But the NYT used a sceptical heading – “How to
Cool a Planet (Maybe)” – moreover, the last sentence of the piece was – “So far,” he added, “there is little reason
to be optimistic” – and the ‘he’ was no other than Dr. Paul Jozef Crutzen
of Max Plank Institute, the Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1995), who by the way
floated such a crazy plan of
geoengineering that some prestigious journals hesitated a lot to publish. But
then he was a famous scientist, moreover an environmental or atmospheric
chemistry expert and won Nobel Prize for his work on Ozone Layer Depletion.
Yet, what drove such a renowned environmental scientist to work up an almost
unbelievably fantastic plan?
In fact, Dr. Crutzen was much perturbed by Global Warming, its
dangerous consequences and the inability
of the societies or present human civilisation to stop it, let alone reverse
it. The reason of global warming is ever-increasing Greenhouse Gas Emission and
Dr. Crutzen knew or believed, and who does not, that in near future
civilisation cannot solve the issue, cannot put a cap in emission and cut it
back quickly, say within a couple of decades, to a considerable extent. Then,
the climate itself should have to be engineered in some way or other to cool
down a bit – otherwise melting of polar ice caps and other climatic changes
will cause havoc to the civilisation.
In scientific systems Dr. Crutzen’s plan can be termed – albedo modification – and we shall later
see what it means, how it will work and what might be its possible consequences
after we look at other geoengineering plans discussed or floated in the March
2011 secret discussion.
We may classify ideas considered there in three groups.
The Group 1 included some not-so-brilliant-or-effective ideas
regarding reflecting back sun’s heat which included painting all rooftops
white, covering the deserts with reflectors, sending huge mirrors in space to
orbit the earth and reflect back sun rays, injecting salts in clouds to
brighten them so that they reflect sun rays &c. These ideas could not
provoke interest amongst the stalwarts present there – because white painted
rooftops can reflect only an insignificant portion of sun’s heat rays; making
the deserts mirror-like poses at least a logistically very huge problem to be
solved (and god knows what other effects can arise, deserts have their role in
weather conditions, ecology, etc); sending so many big mirrors in the space
that can reflect at least a substantial part of heat rays poses a huge fund
problem; ….
The Group 2 idea was a further development of the 1977 idea of C.
Marchetti. Marchetti had proposed pumping of carbon dioxide (CO2) in
seawater to get absorbed – the new idea is rather fascinating – it suggests
farming or cultivating trillions or quadrillions of marine phytoplankton,
single-cell plant-like organism, in the seas and oceans by fertilising seas and
oceans with Iron (strictly speaking an iron compound). These phytoplanktons
will take in atmospheric CO2 as do the plants and by photosynthesis
they will produce oxygen. The majority of the stalwarts present surely did not
jump on the idea, but then, they could not throw it in the garbage bin; some
big brains in the world are behind this idea.
The Group 3 idea and it was the last one was what we mentioned as albedo modification – which means changing or rather enhancing the
reflective power of the atmosphere by some large scale chemical
injections – and it was the centrepiece
of attraction of the scientists present. As the AP reporter wrote, “Only
one idea has emerged with that potential. “By most accounts, the leading
contender is stratospheric aerosol particles,” said climatologist John Shepherd
of Britain’s Southampton University, briefing the Chicheley Hall assemblage on
the climate engineer’s toolkit.” This is almost like artificially replicating
volcanoes and there is a historical example that wooed or motivated some
scientists like it did in the case of Dr. Crutzen.
The year 1816 is known as the Year
without Summer in western countries. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed in, say,
Pennsylvania, USA. It may be noted that “From about July 1 to the
mid-September, this area [The South-eastern Coastal Plain and Piedmont Plateau
in Pennsylvania] has uncomfortably warm periods, four to seven days in length,
during which light wind movement and high relative humidity make conditions
oppressive”; near the Lake Erie the climate is usually hot in summers [climate.met.psu.edu/data/ncdc_pa.pdf]. But rapid,
dramatic temperature swings were common in 1816, with temperatures sometimes
reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures … to near-freezing
within hours. Why it happened?
As records Wikipedia – “It is now generally thought that the aberrations
occurred because of the 1815 (April 5–15) volcanic Mount Tambora eruption on
the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia …. The eruption had a Volcanic Explosivity
Index ranking of 7, a super-colossal event that ejected immense amounts of
volcanic dust into the upper atmosphere. It was the world’s largest eruption
since the Hatepe eruption over 1,630 years earlier in AD 180.” Massive amount
of dust and other volcanic particles that were ejected in the troposphere, that is in that part of the
atmosphere 8 Km to 18 Km above mean sea level, shielded sun rays, changed or
increased the albedo, and cooled
down the earth for many many months.
But tropospheric dust and chemical particles are obvious hazards –
they pollute the air, they do not stay in the air forever and get down to the
sea through rains, in this case probably acid-rains, they cause dry fogs and
impaired vision …. So scientists like Dr. Crutzen prescribe injecting aerosol
particles, sulphates, in the next higher layer of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, which ranges from 8-18 Km
(at poles) up to 50 Km (equator). Then the sulphates will stay longer and
produce a cooling effect by reflecting back sun rays. Of course the sulphates
will not stay there for eternity and so newer and newer consignments of sulphates
will have to be injected there. Some persons thought of carrying sulphates by
repeated journeys of space ships, some even dreamt of having l-o-o-o-n-g
hanging pipes up to that layer and incessantly pump sulphates through those.
However the supporters of albedo
modification like Dr. Crutzen always insist that alongside sulphate
injection, CO2 emission by civilisation has to be decreased as much
as possible and as quickly as possible – sulphate injections cannot go on forever
– it is just a temporary measure to give us some breathing space before civilisation changes over to some
non-(or-less)-CO2-emitting energy technologies.
The British scientists of the establishment call these plans – Plan B – which is to be pondered if they, the biggies that is the powerful
G7 cannot pursue others to cut down CO2 emission as much as they are
told. But the emerging scenario is, as the AP reporter surmised from the
discussions there – these are actually
the Plan A, and why not!
The G7 blames the others of emission, but what are they doing? The
European Environment Agency says that earth can recycle or sustainably permit
maximum 3 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. But human activities are
producing at least double of it. ‘Human
activities’ is rather a vague term. Actually the industrially developed
countries or the rich countries contribute much of the emission in per capita
basis. If we assume global population to be roughly 6.5 – 7 billion now then
the sustainable limit of emission of
CO2 per capita turns out to be 400-450 grams per person per year.
According to a 2008 report: Each average
Canadian produces 23 tonnes emission per year, for an average USA citizen
it is 22.9 tonnes, the least emission per capita among industrialised nations is
in Nuclear powered France – 8.7 tonnes per person per year, and an average
Australian produce 25.9 tonnes emission. For an average Chinese it was 3.9
tonnes in 2008, almost one-sixth of that of USA, for an average Indian the
figure was 1.8 tonnes, almost one-thirteenth of that of USA. Perhaps only
Uruguay produces per capita emission within sustainable limit. With this much
emission of greenhouse gases the industrialised countries have decided for a
paltry cut and that too within 10-15 years in future – but they are adamant
that all countries should cut the
same percentage as them. They can
never think, let alone agree, that all countries should have equal per capita
emission limit! India or China are eager to ‘develop’ and argue that for
the sake of development they cannot
forsake their right to pollute! And international trade nowadays permit buying
and selling of this ‘right to pollute’ through carbon-trading! So humanity
awaits looming danger; tiny island nations and countries like Bangladesh
fearfully awaits their near future submergence. The last climate summit in
Copenhagen was unfruitful in this sense. So there comes the Hero – Plan B.
But Plan B has hitches too – even the glorious Royal Society not
long ago envisaged un-foresee-able risks in geoengineering.
Cultivating marine phytoplankton in the seas and oceans by
fertilising seas and oceans with Iron — may change marine chemistry to the
detriment of aquatic life forms including trillions of fishes and thus may pose
danger to food-chain; may favour some species of phytoplnaktons over other and
thus cause imbalance in marine biology; and etc and this technology has
inconclusive evidences towards all these.
Stratospheric sulphate injection is not only ‘costly’ but also —
there is no reason to think that it will not produce acid rains; it will most
probably affect the ozone layer, it is uncanny as to how a scientist of ozone
layer depletion like Dr. Crutzen could think of it because ozone stays in the
stratosphere and help living beings from dangerous parts of sun’s radiation
that cause cancer; then, sulphate particles will not be there in the
stratosphere homogenously, that is everywhere in same concentration, and that
may suddenly change climate of some parts of the globe in an unforeseeable way
….
There are lots of scientific papers coming out from renowned
scientists which all point against the geoengineering venture.
But what the powerful ones are thinking? Let us have some quotes
from the article of that AP reporter Charles J. Hanley on what transpired in that
hush-hush geoengineering summit: (1) The conferees worried, too, that a
“geoengineering industrial complex” might emerge, pushing to profit from
deployment of its technology. And Australian economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton
saw other go-it-alone threats - “cowboys” and “scientific heroes.” “I’m queasy
about some billionaire with a messiah complex having a major role in
geoengineering research,” Hamilton said. (2) In addition, “one of the
challenges is identifying intentions, one of which could be offensive military
use,” said Indian development specialist Arunabha Ghosh. Experts point out, for
example, that cloud experimentation or localized solar “dimming” could -
intentionally or unintentionally - cause droughts or floods in neighbouring
areas, arousing suspicions and international disputes. “In some plausible but
unfortunate future you could have shooting wars between your country and mine
over proposals on what to do on climate change,’ said the University of
Michigan’s Ted Parson, an environmental policy expert. (3) But at the meeting
in March, Chicheley Hall experts largely assumed that a coalition of
scientifically capable nations, led by the U.S. and Britain, would arise to
organize “sunshade” or other engineering research, perhaps inviting China, India,
Brazil and others to join in a G20-style “club” of major powers.
World powers
are dangerously planning a wild game. It is time we know that and get ourselves
ready to fight that.
