In spite of decades of warnings and international climate arrangements, worldwide carbon emissions are still increasing. Carbon emissions appear like an unstoppable juggernaut as energy-hungry humans keep reproducing and pursuing more wealthy way of lives. Lowering emissions wont be enough to confront the climate crisis; we need additional options.
Geoengineering, also called climate engineering, might be the solution we seek. Is it economically feasible?
One is carbon dioxide removal, and the other is handling solar radiation. Carbon capture, direct air capture, and accelerated weathering get rid of carbon dioxide.
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In spite of years of cautions and international climate contracts, worldwide carbon emissions are still increasing. Carbon emissions seem like an unstoppable juggernaut as energy-hungry humans keep reproducing and pursuing more upscale lifestyles. Thats because even if different solutions come along and we substantially lower our carbon emissions, that doesnt change the truth that there are teratons of carbon in the environment that will be there long after we reduce our emissions. Much of his composing centers on innovation that affects carbon emissions in one method or another. Handmer makes a crucial distinction between tradition CO2 and brand-new emissions in his article.
What can we do?
Casey Handmer is the founder of Terraform Industries, a company that focuses on utilizing solar energy to extract carbon from the atmosphere and use it as fuel. They call it Giga scale climatic hydrocarbon synthesis.
” Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce low-cost natural gas with sunlight and air,” their website says by way of presenting themselves. “We are committed to cutting the net CO2 flux from crust to atmosphere as quickly as possible. As solar power gets cheaper, there will come a time when it is cheaper to get carbon from the environment than an oil well. That time is now.”
Handmer has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from CalTech and has released documents and posts on numerous topics. On his blog, Handmer blogs about space exploration and different aspects of technology. Much of his composing centers on innovation that impacts carbon emissions in one way or another. Recently, he blogged about environment engineering in a post entitled “We ought to not let the Earth overheat!”
Handmer makes an important difference in between tradition CO2 and brand-new emissions in his short article. The technology hes establishing at Terraform Industries is one method that we can lower our emissions.
This chart reveals CO2 emissions in gigatons and what future situations look like. Image Credit: Terraform Industries
As soon as we get to a location where our emissions stop increasing and begin to drop, well be in a much-improved circumstance. Theres still the issue of all that legacy carbon in the environment and all the damage it will cause.
In his article, Handmer asks the question we must all be asking.
” How do we keep the world cool for the next few years while we update our market to a post-carbon world and scale up CO2 elimination?” Casey Handmer, Terraform Industries.
This is where Handmer makes his point about environment engineering. The Earth will continue to heat even after we lower our emissions, and well require to do something. Putting aside, for now, the debate over whether we must accept environment engineering, Handmer goes into the expense of climate engineering.
” Synthetic fuel looks after brand-new CO2 emission, and 2 specific type of geoengineering can look after legacy warming in such a way that safeguards our worlds wellness for future generations and staunches the bleeding for the next number of important years while we finish the job,” Handmer composes.
The two types hes referring to are improved weathering and solar radiation management.
Boosted weathering is taking something that happens naturally and engineering it to be more effective. Its often called accelerated weathering, however thats confusing because accelerated weathering is a type of testing related to engineering and industry.
On Earth, carbonate and silicate minerals integrate with rainwater and groundwater to form carbonic acid. The end outcome is transformed minerals that now contain more climatic carbon. This action is a crucial part of Earths carbon cycle, taking climatic carbon out of circulation and sequestering it into rock, which is ultimately buried on the ocean floor and subducted into the mantle.
When carbonic acid liquifies calcium and magnesium silicate minerals, they break down into liquified substances, some of which include carbon. These materials can stream to the ocean, where marine organisms use them to build shells.
Improved weathering increases the area between carbonic acid and rock so that the natural chemistry that eliminates carbon from the environment has a larger area to work in. Particular minerals are more prone to this weathering, so they eliminate more climatic carbon faster. In enhanced weathering, these minerals are mined, crushed to increase their area, then left exposed. Earths natural chemical activity looks after the rest.
The wanted rocks are called mafic rocks, which include substantial quantities of magnesium and iron. Basalt is a common and prevalent mafic rock.
” There are a bunch of ways of doing this, however the simplest and most inexpensive seems to be to grind up a couple of tropical volcanic mountains and sluice the resulting rock flour into the warm, shallow oceans,” Handmer composes. “The rock dust floats around for a couple of weeks taking in CO2 before sinking, completely sequestering the CO2.”
Other ways include mining, squashing, and spreading it on farm fields. This has actually the included benefit of improving the soil. We currently mine, crush, and spread out things like potash and phosphorous on our farm fields, so this is not a substantial leap.
At Bowles farm, 6 acres of rock dust (meta basalt) addition to cropland soil, large scale CO2 capture task underway, 40 more acres to go!!!! @ucdavis @UCDavisJMIE pic.twitter.com/Ub2WoCiLfJ— Benjamin Z Houlton? (@BenHoulton) October 15, 2019
A critical piece of fighting environment modification is the expense.
In his blog site, Handmer refers to work by Campbell Nilsen, an independent scientist in the US. If there are 2 teratons of excess CO2 in our atmosphere, enhanced weathering can remove one teraton for about $400 billion US per year, over the next forty years. Of course, the value of this calculation relies on us stabilizing and lowering our new emissions.
Handmer also talks about the other classification of geoengineering: handling solar radiation. In the situation where we lower our emissions and execute improved weathering, the Earth will still get hotter.
” How do we keep the world cool for the next couple of years while we update our industry to a post-carbon world and scale up CO2 removal?” Handmer asks.
This visualization shows the carbon dioxide being contributed to Earths environment throughout the year 2021, split into 4 significant contributors: fossil fuels in orange, burning biomass in red, land ecosystems in green, and the ocean in blue. The dots on the surface also show how atmospheric co2 is also being reabsorbed by land communities in green and the ocean in blue. Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.
This is where things can get difficult in the civilizational conversation about Earths climate and what to do about it. Mining, squashing, and spreading out rock on fields is something individuals can quickly comprehend.
But it may be required, whichs something all of us have to contend with if we actually want to prevent suffering. You might have to arrange through those feelings if it makes your anger rise. Truths and clearness can assist out.
” It does us no good to be stable at 350 ppm by 2060 if weve currently lost Greenland, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and 7 m + 4 m of coastline, respectively,” Handmer writes. Hes proper, of course, and this is where managing solar radiation comes in. “What we need is a short-term tourniquet to soothe global heating while we offer the long-lasting repairs time to work.”.
Handling solar radiation is the short-term tourniquet, a kind of first-aid for the environment. “In aggregate, the most reflective function of the Earth is its clouds, which show some of the Suns light back into area,” Handmer composes.
The most well-known approach of solar engineering is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI.) This includes introducing aerosols into the stratosphere, most likely with connected balloons, to make the upper environment more reflective.
This image demonstrates how the SPICE project might use tethered balloons to inject sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. It would show just a few percent of the Suns radiation but would do it rapidly. Image Credit: By Hughhunt– Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16490430.
It doesnt take a huge amount of sulphate aerosols to produce the wanted effect. A negative effects would be more vivid sunsets and sunrises. Instagram would never ever be the exact same.
Some people discover this concept extremely distressing, but generally not because theyve checked out it. Typically individuals recoil from the idea of “tinkering Nature” like this. You cant really blame them, due to the fact that some of our other interventions have triggered problems.
We were alerted years back, and now were living through the results of our collective failure to heed those cautions. Often services make us unpleasant, however theres a precedent for this one.
SAI is precisely what volcanoes do. The Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991 injected about 17,000,000 t of aerosols into the atmosphere. It reduced the international temperature by 0.5 C for one year.
The Pinatubo eruption on June 12, 1991, seen from Clark Air Base, about 40 km east of the volcanos top. Image Credit: By Richard P. Hoblitt, USGS– U.S. Geological Survey., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26865795.
Handmer lays out some of the truths about SAI that many might not know.
After one to three years, they rain out of the atmosphere. “As a rough rule of thumb, 1 g of stratospheric SO2 offsets the warming of 1 T of CO2 for 1 year,” Handmer describes, which sounds like a great offer.
Handmer discusses the start-up Make Sunsets, which is already utilizing weather balloons to inject sulphates into the stratosphere, though the amounts are minor. Anyone can buy in, and the effort demonstrates how possible it is.
Like boosted weathering, SAI is not pricey, considering whats at stake. In truth, its method cheaper.
” 1 kg of SO2 offsets 1000 T of CO2 for 1 year. With enhanced weathering, 1000 T of CO2 would cost at least $20k to handle, and existing DAC+ sequestration techniques currently cost more like $1m. 35c! Now were talking,” composes Handmer. (DAC stands for Direct Air Capture, another approach of removing carbon from the atmosphere.).
Handmer does some more calculations revealing that if only 10,000 individuals around the globe wanted to invest $2,000 each, SAI with balloons could offset heating by CO2 till we get emissions and sequestration under control.
Going deeper, he calculates what it would cost to utilize SAI to balance out one teraton of excess CO2 in the environment. He states that it would cost $350 million per year. “This costs less than 0.1% on a yearly basis of the 40-year program to sequester a trillion tonnes of CO2,” Handmer writes, and would utilize only 5% of the USs annual sulphur production.
Eager readers that do some searching will discover that sulphate aerosols cause acid rain, which would appear to disqualify it as a service. As if people attempting to come up with solutions to prevent suffering are supervillains.
However the acid rain were familiar with originated from industrial smokestacks, not from dizzying aerosols. The difference? Altitude, quantity, and concentrations.
There are stringent guidelines on ground-level sulphate emissions because they produce acid rain concentrations in one location. “SO2 stays in the stratosphere for much longer,” Handmer writes, “so the relatively small amounts needed for cooling do not trigger focused acidic fallout as they would near, eg, a factory or refinery.”.
Handmer makes a strong case that climate engineering methods are not necessarily that expensive. There are all types of tasks being carried out to evaluate and develop possible environment engineering methods, and well keep discovering more about them.
We require to take action. Climate modification threatens to disrupt all that and trigger prevalent suffering. Students of human history can clearly think of how individuals might respond, and what depths some might sink to as the idea of cumulative humanity is left behind.
The options might be questionable in some corners, but as Handmers analysis shows, theyre not necessarily expensive. Eventually, well have to accept and execute some of these methods and put aside our fears, at least the unproven ones.
We can move on to the next problem, whatever it might be.
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Many individuals are terrified of messing with nature in these ways. The potential for unforeseeable effects triggers concern in numerous individualss minds.
Thats because even if various solutions come along and we substantially lower our carbon emissions, that does not alter the reality that there are teratons of carbon in the environment that will be there long after we lower our emissions. We need a method to deal with the ongoing heating of Earth even after we lower our emissions.
Individuals in Eastern Canada or the Northeastern United States are facing the truth of the climate crisis right now. Smoke from an early and extreme wildfire season in Canada is blanketing a few of Americas biggest cities in thick, hazardous smoke. Flights have actually been held off, sporting events cancelled, schools are having a hard time, and authorities are advising people to remain inside your home to secure their health. Were living through the projections researchers made years ago.