Climate Hackers - from Foreign Correspondent on ABC TV

For years scientists have been quietly working on extreme, last-ditch solutions to slow global warming - just in case governments worldwide don’t get their acts together.

Cue scientists.

Jason Box, Copenhagen-based ice climatologist and former IPCC lead author.

With the UN warning of climate catastrophe, it’s increasingly looking like a case of when, not if, we will reach for the once unthinkable fix: geo-engineering, or artificially hacking the climate.

We’re in deep shit and we need to dig ourselves out. For better or worse, geo-engineering is part of the mix going forward because we can’t get to where we need to be by conservation alone – Jason Box, Copenhagen-based ice climatologist and former IPCC lead author.

Some climate hacking has moved beyond the research labs. In Switzerland, a start-up builds giant fans that suck carbon from the air. It’s then sold to a greenhouse where it’s absorbed by plants to make them grow faster.

In the not too distant future, imagine sprinkling iron filings into the seas to encourage carbon eating plankton… Or sending armadas of ships to pump sea mist into the sky to diffuse the sun’s rays… Or using high-altitude balloons to scatter sulphur in the atmosphere to lower the temperature – a bit like what happened naturally after the Mt Pinatubo volcano erupted in 1991.

All these and more are on the drawing board.

If anything it’s too cheap, so cheap we’re talking single digit billions of dollars to potentially influence the entire planet’s climate – Harvard University’s Gernot Wagner on his sulphur blocking project.

Because it’s so cheap, it’s very likely to happen sooner or later. Some Indian billionaire or some Saudi billionaire is gonna do it all by himself – Bjorn Lomborg, political scientist.

Geo-engineering scientists know they may be playing God. 

There’s a huge amount of hubris in saying, ‘Let’s fix the problem and we know exactly what’s going to happen.’ Quite frankly, it makes me anxious – Frank Keutsch, Harvard engineering professor.

Apart from some potentially nasty side effects like damaging the ozone layer, there’s also a risk that climate hacking will give government and industry an excuse to run dead on cutting carbon. 

It’s not unlike America’s opioid problem, according to Frank Keutsch.

Like pain killers, this doesn’t fix the problem. We’re just reducing symptoms and then human nature can kick in and say, ‘Well you know, it’s hard to deal with changing the energy infrastructure’ - Keutsch.

The fossil fuel industry is looking to less exotic solutions. In Texas, reporter Eric Campbell tours a “clean coal” power station that’s held up as a model by the Australian Government. The idea is to capture much of the carbon before it’s expelled into the air.

But as Campbell discovers, the technology is not as clean as it seems. It’s also hugely expensive and still in its infancy…

…Which just makes it more likely that the climate hackers, perhaps sooner than you might think, will have their day in the sun.

Watch the Foreign Correspondent story on ABC TV - “Climate Hackers.”

“Research” - another term for doing nothing

“Research” is just another term for doing nothing, procrastination.

Climate change is moving faster than predicted and we simply don’t have time to procrastinate, that is do more research.

Writing on ‘Grist”, David Roberts says “In my experience, conversations about geoengineering always go the same way. One side says, “That shit’s crazy!” and the other side says, ‘Yes, but we should still research it.’”

In his piece: “More research” into geoengineering is not such a hot idea” Roberts writes: “There are many reasons it is mad, but the main one is simple: Once you start modifying albedo, you can’t stop, ever, without disastrous consequences.”

Doubters told to 'put up or shut up'

Those convinced our climate is changing and that humans are responsible can prove that with indisputable facts.

The skeptics, those chose to ignore what science is telling us and favour fantasy and fallacious ideologies don’t see themselves in any need to prove anything.

Oddly, and confusingly, those same people seem to be assembling behind the idea that geoengineering projects, massive in scale and cost, and aimed at resolving the very troubles we have set in train will slow climate change.

In the first instance they disagree, but then they want us to risk it all in which life on earth is the bet.

There is a contradiction there that first alarms me and illustrates that the reason the doubters lay claim to is absolutely absent.

A story published on The Guardian headed: “Climate change: time for the sceptics to put up or shut up” argues it is time those same doubter had an international conference and told us what it is they really believe.

Geo-engineering ideas to mitigate climate change

Geo-engineering ideas have been, and are proposed as workable solutions to climate change.

An image prortrayig
one of the
 geo-enginneering
ideas.

Advocates of these ideas are not eager to see any of them implemented, but see one of them at least of them as inevitable as the world’s atmosphere continues to be polluted by carbon dioxide.

For many years, most have argued, and agreed, that human habitation was sustainable provided the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained at our below 350 parts per million.

A symbolic moment occurred in past week when 400ppm level was passed as the human onslaught continued, unabated.

Various geo-engineering ideas where explored in a recent ABC story – "Five Ways to Save the World".

What is intended is understood, but it is important we understand that the discussion should not be about “saving the world” as irrespective of how we behave, the world itself will be okay, but the species on it are what  need saving.

The discussion is really not about saving the world, rather saving and protecting the conditions that all species or all varieties to survive and prosper.