• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Geo-engineering 'could mean more heat'

February 19, 2014
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Finding a technology that would let us counteract the effects of climate change is a cherished dream. But if there is a cure, it could be worse than the disease, scientists say.

LONDON, 19 February – The geo-engineers just cannot win, it seems. First, scientists demonstrated that ambitious plans to cool the planet by dimming solar radiation could have unintended and unwelcome consequences. And now they have shown something even more alarming: any programme to block the sunlight could precipitate even more dramatic global warming once it stopped, according to Environmental Research Letters.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

Geo-engineering as a fallback strategy has been on the climate science agenda for decades. Almost all climate researchers argue, and have argued for 30 years, that the most effective response to global warming and the threat of climate change is a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuel, everywhere on the planet.

Although many governments have agreed, and have even introduced attempts to control greenhouse gas emissions, levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases keep rising.

So researchers have suggested other possible solutions: “artificial trees” to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide; the fertilisation of the oceans to accelerate algal photosynthesis; and even the injection of sulphate particles into the stratosphere to block the incoming sunlight. Such things happen naturally, during occasional violent volcanic eruptions, and global cooling has been observed to follow.

This last deliberate technological response might create other kinds of unwelcome climate change, among which would be an alarming change in rainfall patterns, other scientists have argued.

But now Kelly McCusker of the University of Washington in the US and colleagues have proposed yet another reason for limiting discharges into the upper atmosphere. Whatever benefits might follow the technique known as solar radiation management or SRM would be wiped out once the management stopped.

Worse when you stop

Quite simply the technology could ultimately make climate change more dramatic and global warming more alarming. If solar radiation management techniques were applied for a few decades and then halted, global temperature increases would more than double. The consequential heat would be worse than that expected if the sun-block had never been applied at all.

All such research is conducted with computer simulations. There remains no practical way of modelling such an experiment in real time and in the real world on a pilot scale.

But climate simulations seem to accurately “hindcast” real climates of the last 50 years, and the bet is that therefore they can forecast with reasonable accuracy the climate patterns to come.

The University of Washington team modelled a future climate in which the world went on increasing the rate of emissions in such a way that global average temperatures were 1°C above the average for 1970-1999.

Then, in the same simulation, the hypothetical geo-engineers stepped in and kept on loading the upper atmosphere with sulphate particles for 25 years. And then, for some hypothetical political or economic reason, or some notional technological failure, the solar radiation management plan came to a sudden halt.

And at that point, the models showed, global average temperatures would rise steeply, by 4°C. Over the same time frame, without the sun-block experiment, global average temperatures would have risen only 2°C.

Penalising the poor

The new rate of temperature rise would be on average 1°C per decade, about six times faster than the average over the last 40 years. This sustained warming, the authors say, would be “well outside 20th century climate variability bounds.”

The researchers say the temperature changes would be greatest in winter in the high latitudes – this seems to be the same in all global warming scenarios – but even in the tropics in the summer, once the sun-block was abandoned, the changes would be pronounced.

This would hit the world’s poorest, who are concentrated in the tropics, and at the same time pose a threat to the world’s richest centres of biodiversity, once again in the tropics. There would be a pronounced increase in rain and snow fall, but half of all land areas would also experience an increase in aridity.

All this of course is based on a set of simulations, and these incorporate the assumption that the injection of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere would be technically possible, economically feasible, and truly effective: none of this is for certain.

The research does not deliver an accurate picture of the future. But it certainly does not deliver any encouragement to believe that a “technological fix” could counter the consequences of the steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

“The only way to avoid creating the risk of substantial temperature increases through SRM, therefore, is concurrent strong reductions of GHG emissions”, says McCusker. – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
42
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
27

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.2k
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
275
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
83
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
307
KHOU 11/YouTube

Texas Export Terminal Admits Human Error in LNG Explosion, Fire

August 21, 2022
3.1k
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
285

Recent Posts

Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
527
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
94
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
47

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
79
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
505

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
228
Next Post

Arctic 'is set to reach 13°C by 2100'

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}