Until recently, the idea of solar radiation modification was a speculative niche of climate science. That has changed fast. Private firms are exploring solar geoengineering as a commercial opportunity: Last year, a US-Israeli startup called Stardust Solutions raised $60 million, and in May it released details of a suite of new inventions it claims would give humans the ability to dial down the global temperature as desired. In August, Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX might be a candidate for delivering geoengineering interventions, threw his voice behind solar geoengineering, writing on X: “Space satellites to control temperature and massive geo-engineering will be needed or it will be game over.”

It was against this backdrop that Danielle Young, an assistant professor in international relations at Leeds University, arranged the war game. Its setting was a hastily convened UN committee charged with coordinating the international response to developments in solar geoengineering. The game unfolded over simulated meetings set at three points in time: the present, September 2027, and September 2028. Each step ratcheted up the stakes, with the game creators introducing new advances in sunlight-reflecting technology. As in real life, no one knew all the facts, and players had to respond to events that were bringing the world closer to a full-scale attempt at deploying solar geoengineering tech, even when they may not have a full picture of what had truly occurred—or what any of the others were up to.

A player representing an NGO called the Climate Futures Cooperative approached Golja, offering her money to fund such a scheme.

“Great. Fabulous. Why wouldn’t I do that?” she recalls thinking.

But it soon came out that the Climate Futures Cooperative was actually backed by the fossil fuel industry. The organizers had recognized that fossil fuel companies and major producing countries like the US and Saudi Arabia would have a clear interest in removing barriers from the development of a technology that could combat climate change without having to immediately stop burning coal, oil, and gas. The shadowy NGO spent the game subtly wrecking the vibe and carping about process—though mostly they just sat back and let it burn. Some players—Russia, the US, SpaceX and Stardust—figured out the CFC was not what it seemed, says Young. “But they assessed it was to their benefit and didn’t draw attention to it.” Then the CFC chose its moment to offer money to Golja, only to crater her credibility, isolating and fragmenting the voice of science in the room.

In the months since the simulation ended, Golja has reevaluated many things. On a corkboard behind her desk, she has pinned up a note to herself, laying out a vision for life in a world ruled by narrow geopolitical self-interest rather than science, evidence, and reason. Her answer: She plans to return to the small coastal town where she grew up in Connecticut and use her expertise to help local climate groups build the seawalls and coastal erosion buffers they will need to cope with the inevitable. “To try and make a difference where it feels like I actually have traction,” she says. After what she saw, pursuing science in the hope of informing global decisions no longer held as much appeal. “Now it feels a little bit more personal.”

They War-Gamed Dimming the Sun. It Went Even Worse Than You Think

Solar geoengineering could buy humanity time against climate change—or trigger a dangerous new arms race. A first-of-its-kind simulation offered a glimpse of what happens when geopolitics takes the wheel.

Somewhat positive example of relatively small scale geoengineering.

In Brazil, so-called “green deserts” have been expanding across the country, [...] Brazil produces more eucalyptus than any other country, primarily for timber and pulp harvest. [...] Its new megaplant in Ribas do Rio Pardo, Mato Grosso do Sul–opened with the blessing of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva–is one of the largest industrial pulp facilities on Earth. As plantations grow, so do reports of depleted national water reserves, increased deforestation of native forests, loss of Indigenous and traditional territories, agrotoxin contamination, and escalating conflicts with indigenous communities.

GE [genetically engineered] eucalyptus is being marketed as the next frontier of “carbon dioxide removal.” These trees are engineered for traits such as accelerated growth or delayed decomposition and are framed as climate solutions despite ecological and scientific uncertainties. They represent land-based geoengineering with consequences for forests, water systems, biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples.

Diamond dust from detonation synthesis, the most economical method for large-scale nanodiamond production, could cause an expensive mess, they found. Such particles inevitably contain residual carbon impurities, typically ranging from 1-5% by mass. Even the most minute carbonaceous impurity in the dust causes further absorption, not reflection, of heat, their research found. It’s now published online in the Journal of Aerosol Science.

Abstract

Marine cloud brightening (MCB), a geoengineering strategy that increases the cloud albedo, is potentially able to reduce the impacts of global warming. We simulate an MCB strategy to offset the warming induced by anthropogenic aerosol reduction following the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 1-1.9 carbon-neutral scenario. Injecting sea salt aerosol into four cloudy regions in the eastern Pacific Ocean every year from 2020 to 2100 effectively restrains the future global-mean surface air temperature and precipitation change to the 2020 level. Aerosol-cloud interaction dominates the cooling in this MCB strategy. However, this strategy does not fully offset the warming in Europe, the United States, northeastern China and downwind offshore oceans, partly related to the acceleration of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation driven by the MCB-induced hemispherical asymmetric radiation gradients. Considering both the anthropogenic aerosol reductions and the MCB sea salt injection, some regions would face unintended climate change. Our study highlights the need for a more careful implementation strategy to produce both widespread cooling and fewer regional climate risks considering the effects are highly dependent on the strategy and seeding location.

The focus of climate policy should be on interventions that deal directly with the causes of climate harms

Archived copies of the article:

• archive.today
• web.archive.org

The paper is here

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27262489

The paper is here

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/24843919

The UK’s Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) announced £56.8m to fund 21 geoengineering projects around the world over the next five years.

The announcement felt less of a scientific milestone and more like a plot point for that dystopian novel, which opens with catastrophic heatwaves we hope we never live to see, but increasingly fear we might.

The reality is that we simply don’t know what type of side effects these experiments will cause

As the impacts of drought only get worse, there is a chance that these weather manipulation experiments, and potentially far worse, will become far more common around the world. Scarier still is that the world’s billionaire class, rather than governments alone, could become rogue weather makers of their own.

Archive : https://archive.ph/rEn06

• Artificial upwelling is a form of geoengineering that aims to use pipes and pumps to channel cool, nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean to the surface. In doing so, it could fertilize surface waters, prompting the growth of plankton, which can then absorb and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon.
• Long considered a potential marine carbon dioxide removal (CDR) method, artificial upwelling has more recently been coupled with seaweed farming to potentially soak up even more atmospheric CO2.
• But technological challenges have plagued open-water upwelling experiments, while environmentalists worry that large-scale use could ultimately prove ineffective and ecologically harmful.
• Experts state that though upwelling could prove a viable solution to improve fisheries and protect coral reefs from marine heat waves, more research is needed. Considering the rapid current pace of climate change, it’s debatable as to whether implementation at scale could come in time to stave off dangerous warming.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/11222731

For those living in Asia and other parts of the world where big cities generally = bad to dangerously bad air, the idea of putting more stuff in the atmosphere because global warming sounds like an intuitively bad idea. That is before getting to the fact that there is no meaningful regulation of geoengineering, that there are serious questions as to whether the effects of any operations can be contained, and the standards for determining effectiveness versus harm. This like GMOs is on its way to become a great experiment upon the general public without consents or controls.

On top of that, the Israeli angle gives me the willies. Since this is a commercial operation, if any of its experiments actually do prove to be harmful, the odds seem high that those approaches would be repurposed as weapons. In fact, it’s almost certain that these applications would produce faster and greater profits than the climate-change-combatting geoengineering sort.

archived (Wayback Machine)

As the atmosphere continues to fill with greenhouse gases from human activities, many proposals have surfaced to "geoengineer" climate-saving solutions, that is, alter the atmosphere at a global scale to either reduce the concentrations of carbon or mute its warming effect.

"Our work showed that the efficiency of the proposed technology was quite low, meaning widespread adoption of the technology would be required to make any meaningful impact on atmospheric CH4," said Mayhew, a postdoctoral researcher with the U's Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. "Then, our results indicate that if this technology is adopted at scale, then we start to see some negative air-quality side effects, particularly for wintertime particulate matter air pollution."

The study

Many scientists have warned that solar geoengineering will give emitters an excuse not to end fossil-fuel addictions

Here are some of the key reasons to oppose geoengineering, which are discussed in more depth below:

• It doesn’t work: None of the technologies have a track record, all of them come with major risks and unknowns, and in some cases the effects would be obviously catastrophic.
• Detracts from real solutions: By promising a quick fix, geoengineering threatens to delay the implementation of a transition away from fossil fuels, and could redirect funding and investments away from real climate solutions. Some geoengineering proposals require vast amounts of energy, which means less climate-friendly energy for everyone else.
• Human rights and biodiversity: Many geoengineering proposals require the intensive exploitation of vast amounts of land (in the case of BECCS, twice the size of India!) and increasingly the oceans too . Those projects would inevitably displace millions of people and potentially wipe out entire ecosystems.
• Weaponization: Computer models show that geoengineering interventions can have regional winners and losers; should governments and corporations decide that geoengineering can successfully change climate patterns, it will inevitably be weaponized.
• The bottom line: geoengineering techniques do nothing to address the root causes of climate change, and evidence points to a high likelihood that rather than improving the climate, they would make things worse—potentially in catastrophic fashion.

• The first-ever field test of ocean alkalinity enhancement in the United States was pushed back to 2025 due to shipping issues. But the geoengineering experiment has also run into public opposition from local environmentalists, commercial fishers and others.

• The test would dump sodium hydroxide (commonly called lye) off the New England coast to study its dispersal as a potential tool for sequestering CO₂.

• Opponents allege this small-scale geoengineering test could harm local wildlife, but researchers say the material will disperse within minutes. The scientists say they will also continue to reach out to local communities to alleviate fears over the study.

Archive link

Toying with ocean chemistry also carries unknown risks. Some environmental groups worry that even early experiments with these techniques could threaten fish and other aquatic life.

Altering marine environments to cool the planet has been contentious from the moment scientists first suggested it four decades ago.

This is Part Two of a two-part story. Find Part One here.

Key Ideas

• As climate change accelerates, some scientists are calling for more field research into solar geoengineering concepts. However, these ideas are running into opposition from other researchers, some governments and the public.

• A series of recent setbacks has put solar geoengineering research on the back foot, attempting to figure out a way to navigate the opposition.

• Proponents of field research say it would help humanity better understand the potential and problems with solar geoengineering, while opponents argue that there are too many risks and it could take our eye off the ball: cutting carbon emissions.

• The debate has spilled into the international arena, pitting nations that support greater research against those that would like to see a solar geoengineering non-use agreement.