One scientist hopes to engineer the climate with antacid

Climate scientist Zhen Dai
in her Harvard lab.

To help cure the planet’s ailments, Zhen Dai suggests antacid. In powdered form, calcium carbonate—often used to relieve upset stomachs—can reflect light; by peppering the sky with the shiny white particles, the Harvard researcher thinks it might be possible to block just enough sunlight to achieve some temperature control here on Earth. Dai’s work calls for a custom-­designed test balloon that, pending an independent committee’s green light, is set to release up to a kilogram of calcium carbonate 12 miles above the US, in what will be the first solar geoengineering experiment in the lower atmosphere. Small onboard propellers will stir the payload into the air.

Though this one’s highly localized, expansive sun-dimming schemes carry risks. Crops may shrivel, and developing countries might disproportionately suffer the side effects. Dai has spent her career thinking about the environment—she has helped purify water in Haiti and once designed a machine to scoop up oil after spills. Global warming, she asserts, requires the pursuit of every available option. “Solar geoengineering could give us some flexibility. It’s not so different from anything else we’ve done in the world,” she says, suggesting that ancient irrigation was environmental modification too.

Read the Wired story by Rebecca Heilweil - “One scientist hopes to engineer the climate with antacid.”

‘Really extreme' global weather event leaves scientists aghast

Climate scientists are used to seeing the range of weather extremes stretched by global warming but few episodes appear as remarkable as this week's unusual heat over the Arctic.

Zack Labe, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine, said average daily temperatures above the northern latitude of 80 degrees have broken away from any previous recordings in the past 60 years.

"To have zero degrees at the North Pole in February - it's just wrong," said Amelie Meyer, a researcher of ice-ocean interactions with the Norwegian Polar Institute. "It's quite worrying.”

The so-called Polar Vortex - a zone of persistient low-pressure that typically keeps high-latitude cold air separate from regions further south - has been weakening for decades.

In this instance, "a massive jet of warm air" is penetrating north, sending a cold burst southwards, said Dr Meyer, who has relocated to Hobart to research on the southern hemisphere, and is hosted by Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in The Age - “‘Really extreme' global weather event leaves scientists aghast.”

Insurance companies have a role to play in equipping us for challenges of climate change

Lloyd's of London will no longer allow their trading platform to be used for investing in coal, because this fuel is the main driver of climate change. Given the global insurance industry has been harking on for decades about the increasing risks of extreme weather to property, one would have thought they might have arrived at that conclusion a little sooner.

A resident in the flooded streets of Rockhampton
during the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie in April 2017.

During their 25 years of inaction on this front, the insurance industry, through investments and cover, has facilitated massive coal use around the world, locking emissions and unavoidable warming into the atmosphere. As a result, we now have a large number of property owners around Australia who are going to feel the heat of surging insurance prices to cover worsening weather extremes. The industry has an obligation to respond.

Read Karl Mallon’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Insurance companies have a role to play in equipping us for challenges of climate change.”