Geoengineering News

People are apparently not willing to pay the price to switch from an intensive fossil fuel based system in time to lower atmospheric CO2 by very much very fast. 2010 witnessed the most greenhouse gas ever released into the air by people. The next 5 years is critical. Every polluting facility built in this time is likely to permanently lock in climate change effects.

For these reasons, it seems very likely that geoengineering options will be deployed in a last ditch effort to mitigate the effects of our activities. As a first step Geoengineering alternatives are close to real world testing. This page will follow the results of testing.

Ozone Layer Engineering

One area of potential geoengineering success appears to be a partial restoration of the Ozone layer. The method known as OLG or Ozone Layer Engineering aims to replace lost oxygen in upper atmospheric layers (9-21 miles high) with new oxygen. The plan involves unmanned planes discharging O2 into the layer.

Natural Cleaning Agents

Research chemists have discovered atmospheric molecules that have the ability to naturally scrub pollutants. But, the devil is in the details.

The molecules known as Crigee Biradicals have been sucessfully re-created in the lab. However, mass production and deployment is likely a long way off.

It is worth noting that the researchers in the effort report that it is best that people support natural ecosystem development verses molecule deployment. Bio-systems can provide the biradicals naturally.

Sulfate Injection - It will not work everywhere

Injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere may not only work everywhere, and it might cause problems of its own.

The University of Washington has concluded that you can not just add aerosols to reverse the effects of CO2 on climate. After aerosol injections, there will still be areas not affected by the treatment.

Circulation patterns are complicated, and constantly changing as more CO2 is added. There could still be some big surprises, like large ice sheets melting.

2010 - The most greenhouse gas ever

Data just in: Global output of carbon dioxide rose record amounts says the U.S. Department of Energy. 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon went into the air in 2010 than in 2009. That is a 6% increase in one year. People take note!

Oceans Will Continue to Acid Up

In one of the first not reversible trends of mocern increased atmospheric carbon concentrations, it appears that our oceans will become increasingly acidic. Acid content of ocean waters has gone up 30% since the start of the industrial revolution. The trend continues.

Geoengineering efforts presented here will not stop the lowering of oceanic pH levels. This is not good news.

Roofers Stick to Roofing?

One SRM alternative is painting roofs white to reflect sunlight back to space. Intuitively this seems like a great idea. New research results show however that light reflected from roofs could actually disrupt cloud cover. This actually increases the amount of sun hitting the earth which increases warming. Oh well.

This is an example of unintended consequences of a seemingly straight forward great idea.

Public Bullish on Geoengineering Research.

The first international survey on geo-manipulation shows that Some 72% of 3,105 questioned the UK, US and Canada say they "somewhat" or "strongly" support scientists researching SRM.

This interest will in our view translate into a new business of fixing the air we have polluted.