drying

The U.N. meets about geoengineering

October 9, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Geoengineering refers to a wide range of mechanical or chemical methods aimed at deliberately changing the global climate system. It includes a number of unproven concepts, one of which is intentionally polluting the upper atmosphere with thousands of tons of artificial particles such as chemical sprays or mineral dust. This is referred to as solar radiation management or SRM. The idea is to dim sunlight, thereby slowing the rise of global temperatures by deflecting solar energy away from the Earth’s surface before it can be trapped as heat by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The United Nations Environmental Program held workshops in May and September to address the issue of such strategies. This official position of the UN is that strategies such as SRM are not a climate solution given that they do not actually address the underlying causes of climate change. Recent research has shown that SRM efforts could potentially shift rainfall patterns, intensify heat waves or cold snaps, lead to overall drying, and have other unpredictable consequences.

Many participants expressed concern that the discussion focused too much on engineering aspects and not on the potential risks of such efforts. The prevailing opinion among scientists is that SRM deployment is too dangerous and ungovernable and therefore should not be pursued.

Current geopolitical trends make the possibility of geoengineering efforts by authoritarian states disturbingly likely. While there are international guidelines on geoengineering activities, the potential threat of unilateral efforts by rogue nations is growing.

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UN Sessions on Solar Geoengineering Trigger Unease

Photo, posted May 12, 2016, courtesy of Susanne Nilsson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Drying rivers and hydropower

February 7, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A decade ago, Ecuador began a major transition to using hydroelectric power. Like in many other South American countries, the presence of abundant rivers could supply large amounts of energy and drive economic expansion and lead to a new era of prosperity.

This ambitious plan has run into the impacts of climate change. An extraordinary drought has engulfed much of South America, drying rivers and reservoirs, and has put Ecuador’s power grid on the brink of collapse.

Since September, daily energy cuts in Ecuador have lasted as long as 14 hours. An industry group says that the nation is losing $12 million in productivity and sales for every hour the power is out. Just a few years ago, Ecuador was making great strides in reducing poverty. Now, as the energy crisis has increased its grip on the country, much of what was achieved is being lost.

Ecuador’s situation is not unique. In recent years, abnormally dry weather in multiple places has resulted in extreme low water levels in rivers, reducing hydropower resources in Norway, Canada, Turkey, and even rainforest-rich Costa Rica.

Overall, more than one billion people live in countries where more than half of their energy comes from hydroelectric plants. With a warming climate and increasing incidence of extreme weather events like drought, it is likely that hydropower will become a less reliable energy source. More than a quarter of all hydroelectric dams are in places with a medium to high risk of water scarcity by 2050.

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The Rivers Run Dry and the Lights Go Out: A Warming Nation’s Doom Loop

Photo, posted January 15, 2020, courtesy of Pedro Szekely via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Making Use Of Invasive Seaweed | Earth Wise

June 26, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In recent years, millions of tons of brown Sargassum seaweed have formed gigantic blooms stretching all the way across the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. The seaweed has become a problem for shorelines in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the east coast of Florida. The massive increase in seaweed populations is related to changes in ocean chemistry resulting from nutrients from fertilizer use entering the water as well as from changes to the climate affecting ocean currents and temperatures. The seaweed is harming the tourism industry as well as fisheries and ocean ecosystems.

Cleaning up the seaweed that washes ashore is labor-intensive and therefore expensive. A research team led by two British universities has developed a cheap and simple way to pre-process seaweed to facilitate making it into bulk chemicals and biofuels. With the new process, cleaning up the seaweed can be both economically and environmentally viable.

Previous techniques for processing seaweed generally required removing it from the saltwater, washing it in fresh water, and drying it – all of which add significant costs. The new technique makes use of catalysts to release sugars from untreated seaweed that feed a yeast to produce a palm oil substitute. At the same time, the process creates heat and pressure, turning the residual materials into a bio-oil that can be processed further into fuels, and a high-quality, low-cost fertilizer.

Apart from getting economic value out of the seaweed that is collected, any plastic collected alongside the seaweed can be converted to useful materials as well.

It appears that the seaweed scourge is here to stay, so finding an economically viable way to deal with it is a welcome development.

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Solve invasive seaweed problem by turning it into biofuels and fertilisers

Photo, posted August 10, 2015, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wildfire Pollution

January 24, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

California’s record-breaking wildfires this past season have been an unmitigated disaster with respect to loss of life, property, impact on human health, and in multiple other ways. And as if all of that was not bad enough, the impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere was equally catastrophic. The wildfires were deadly and cost billions of dollars but were also terrible for the environment and for the public’s health.

According to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the California wildfires released emissions equivalent to about 68 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is equal to the emissions from generating one year’s worth of electricity in the state, or about 15% of the total annual emissions in the state of California.

It is a vicious circle in which the changes to the climate that have lengthened the fire season and shortened the precipitation season are creating additional contributions to the warming of the climate.

Over the past century, California has warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit. That extra-warmed air sucks water out of plants and soils, resulting in trees, shrubs, and rolling grasslands that are dry and primed to burn. That vegetation-drying effect compounds with every additional degree of warming. Plants lose their water more efficiently as temperatures get higher.

The result is that wildfires are increasing in size both in California and across the western United States. Fire experts at Columbia University estimate that since the 1980s, the warming climate has contributed to an extra 10 million acres of burning in western forests – an area about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

It’s a bad situation that is getting worse.

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California’s 2018 Wildfires Have Emitted A Year’s Worth of Power Pollution

Photo, posted October 11, 2017, courtesy of Bob Dass via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.