Royal Society Gives Geoengineering A Cautious Thumbs Up In Fight Against Carbon

The debate about geoengineering, the process of intervening in and manipulating the natural environment, comes as the UK government’s energy promises have been admirably ambitious, even far-sighted, in terms of addressing carbon emissions – David Miliband recently published his report that promised nearly a third of electricity being generated by renewables by 2020, along with 228 pages of other stuff. Unfortunately we’re currently in the relegation zone of European renewables producers along with such GDP titans as Malta, so there’s a serious amount of work to be done if the actions are to match the words. And this is where geoengineering comes in.

Some of the ways to cut carbon are rather prosaic, like wind farms, but there are some, the geoengineering methods, that seem like things Heath Robinson filed away as “too wacky”. These include “iron fertilization”, where iron is fed into the sea to encourage phytoplankton to grow there and suck up CO2; putting giant mirrors into space to reflect sunlight; making clouds shiny and reflective; “chemical buffering of the oceans”, where you pop alkalis into seawater to encourage CO2 uptake; artificially pumping water around the oceans through giant pipes; putting aluminium particles in space to reflect the sun; reflective balloons; and painting your roof white. Now the Royal Society has, in a paper published yesterday, announced that while all these ideas are silly and expensive, we might nevertheless have to start thinking about them as part of our fight against climate change. 

Let’s be clear, these technologies are being treated by scientists with the same level of reluctance as is usually afforded maverick cops by their superiors in Hollywood films – indignation at their bravado, inefficience and general disrespect for procedure, but with an undertone of grudging admittance that they get the job done. “Some schemes are manifestly far-fetched… some are being promoted over-optimistically”, says Lord Rees in his introduction, adding, “it is already clear than none offers a ‘silver bullet’, and that some options are far more problematic than others.” And yet, and yet! “Geoengineering methods could however potentially be useful in future to augment continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions, and so should be subject to more detailed research and analysis”. Fire up the space mirrors, boys!

The Royal Society says the best ideas are ones that reduce CO2 levels in the long term, rather than ones that reduce global temperatures in the short term, i.e. cloud whitening et al. So the best ideas are planting new forests, but while remembering not to impact upon food production; and physical absorption of CO2 using various chemical processes about which the layperson’s very brain will frown trying to understand (“a humidity swing absorption cycle using surfaces derived from commercial ion-exchange resins” and so on). In essence, carbon capture technologies that use either trees or chemicals to suck up already existing CO2.

Those that get the thumbs down are the encouraging of phytoplankton (pictured right off the coast of Ireland) and any “large-scale manipulation of ecosystems” whose effects are unpredictable and could do more harm than good, which also includes messing with the pH of the sea; and the space mirrors, which, while potentially “cost-effective” when looking at the extremely long term, simply won’t be ready for deployment for many years thanks to the technology not being ready.

As well as the worry that we might skew various ecosystems with our meddling, the whole thing is fraught with the maybe slightly paranoid danger that some Dr. Evil-type character might use geo-engineering to control the climate AND THEREFORE THE WORLD: ”the risk exists that some methods could be deployed by individual nation states, corporations or even one or more wealthy individuals without appropriate regulation or international agreement.” 

They also acknowledge that the whole thing is an ethical minefield, and that even its staunchest proponents regard geoengineering as something of a last resort. Nevertheless, it seems contradictory for the government to support carbon capture in the context of capturing that which is generated through the burning of fossil fuels, and not to support carbon capture of previously existing CO2 through geoengineering. Obviously the most important task is reducing the amount of CO2 being created, but dealing with the rate of its disappearance should be of near-equal importance.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Green Rush | September 2, 2009 1:30PM |