balloons

Renegade geoengineering

October 30, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the dangers of climate change continue to grow, so has interest in geoengineering – deliberate tinkering with the earth’s climate system. In particular, stratospheric solar geoengineering – releasing aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of heat from the sun reaching the Earth – is attracting increasing interest. Scientists at Harvard, Cornell, Colorado State, Princeton, and the University of Chicago are all researching the topic.

Actually doing it on a scale that matters is fraught with peril from unintended consequences of disrupting the delicate interactions between the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice.

Meanwhile, a tiny start-up company in Silicon Valley has raised more than a million dollars in venture capital and is busy releasing balloons full of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere in the name of combatting global warming. Furthermore, they are selling so-called “cooling credits” to customers who want to offset their personal carbon emissions.

The aerosol being released is on such a small scale that it can’t possibly have a meaningful effect on temperatures. There really isn’t scientific analysis guiding or accompanying the work.

There are no laws prohibiting the dispersal of small amounts of sulfur dioxide in California. Even if there were, these people could go offshore or elsewhere to do their work. But this renegade geoengineering highlights a serious issue; namely, that there doesn’t have to be scientific, political, or any other kind of consensus for someone to undertake a potentially catastrophic attempt to alter the climate. It’s a real worry.

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Silicon Valley Renegades Pollute the Sky to Save the Planet

Photo, posted September 24, 2006, courtesy of Doc Searls via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Side Effects Of Geoengineering | Earth Wise

July 20, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the world struggles to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the global climate, some researchers are exploring proposals to deliberately engineer climate changes to counteract the warming trend. One of the most widely discussed approaches is to shade the Earth from a portion of the sun’s heat by injecting the stratosphere with reflective aerosol particles. Proponents of this idea point out that volcanoes do essentially the same thing, although generally for only a limited amount of time. Particularly large eruptions, such as the Krakatowa eruption of 1883, wreaked havoc with weather around the world for an entire year.

Schemes to launch reflective aerosols – using planes, balloons, and even blimps – appear to be quite feasible from the standpoint of physically accomplishing them. But this says nothing about the political, ethical, and societal issues involved. The point is that such an approach could indeed lower global temperatures and thereby potentially offset the warming effects of greenhouse gases.

A study by scientists at MIT looked at what other effects such a solar geoengineering project might have on the climate. Their modeling concluded that it would significantly change storm tracks in the middle and high latitudes. These tracks give rise to cyclones, hurricanes, and many more ordinary weather phenomena.

According to the study, the northern hemisphere would have weakened storm tracks, leading to less powerful winter storms, but also stagnant conditions in summer and less wind to clear away air pollution. In the southern hemisphere, there would be more powerful storm tracks.

Aside from turning the world’s weather patterns inside out, solar geoengineering would do nothing to address the serious issue of ocean acidification caused by increasing carbon dioxide levels.

As many have pointed out, playing the geoengineering game would have many unintended consequences.

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Study: Reflecting sunlight to cool the planet will cause other global changes

Photo courtesy of MIT.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Balloons And Seabirds

March 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that there is a ton of plastic in the ocean – millions of tons, in fact. Scientists estimate that there is more 165 million tons of plastics swirling about in our oceans today, with an additional 8.8 million tons flowing in every year. As the oceans swell with plastic debris, many marine species wind up ingesting the stuff – often with dire consequences.

All this plastic trash winds up affecting more than just aquatic species, too. According to researchers from the University of Tasmania, a seabird that ingested a single piece of plastic has a 20% chance of mortality. This statistic jumps to 50% if the seabird consumes nine pieces of plastic.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, also found that while hard plastics account for the majority of plastic debris ingested, it’s far less likely to prove fatal than soft plastics, such as balloons.

In fact, the researchers found that balloons or balloon fragments were the number one marine debris risk of mortality for seabirds, killing almost one in five of the seabirds that ingested them.

The leading cause of death among the seabirds studied was blockage of the gastrointestinal tract. While soft plastics only accounted for 5% of the ingested plastics, they were responsible for more than 40% of seabird mortality. But the researchers make clear that hard plastics were still responsible for more than half of the study’s seabird deaths.

If we want to reduce the number of marine species dying from plastic ingestion, we need to reduce the volume of plastic going into the ocean and do what we can to remove what’s already there.

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Balloons the number 1 marine debris risk of mortality for seabirds

Photo, posted July 24, 2014, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.