February 2, 2010 Literary Arts

Radical strategies

Gambling with geo-engineering avoids the real problem, warn researchers

by Jessica Vihvelin

The Montreal skyline may scream if geo-engineering is used to combat climate change. GRAPHIC DARNYA RUHKLYADEVA

Imagine the sun setting on Montreal, the sky behind the mountain illuminated with intense and lurid hues of golden yellows, oranges and crimson reds—not unlike Edvard Munch’s famed painting The Scream.

It’s said that Munch’s work was inspired by the intensity of dusk skies in the aftermath of Krakatoa’s 1883 eruption—one of the most violent in modern history. The residual sulphur in the atmosphere didn’t just inspire awe and creativity, it also drastically cooled the planet, lowering global temperatures by just over one degree celsius.

If advocates of geo-engineering have their way, pumping sulphur into the stratosphere to combat global warming, vividly-hued future skies could become a reality.

In late 2009, McGill hosted the Lorne Trottier Symposium on Geo-engineering, where a group of climate scientists met to discuss many methods, including sowing sulphur, that could alter the climate and prevent or correct massive climate disruption.

Climate change research paints an increasingly detailed picture of an atmosphere in trouble, requiring imminent and drastic changes in legislation and global efforts in order to reduce carbon emissions.

As greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures continue to rise, scientists have begun exploring geo-engineering as another avenue to save the planet. It represents a rapidly growing area of research—with or without global governments’ commitment to emissions treaties.

Ideas on the table are weighted for their potential for cooling—and wreacking havoc on the Earth’s ecosystems. Deliberately injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere causes billowing cirrus clouds that reflect the sun’s ultraviolet rays back into space. Dumping iron into the oceans fertilizes plankton so they can absorb carbon dioxide. Erecting massive mirrors increases the reflectivity of urban areas and reduces the urban heat island effect created by large expanses of pavement.

While governments drag their feet and fail to act, as seen in the latest Copenhagen agreements, some scientists propose that technological fixes might be a necessary and vital part of a future solution.

“We are completely overwhelming the natural carbon cycle in the biosphere,” said David Keith, who spoke at the McGill conference. “And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong or bad about climate change, unless we decide that we don’t want to see alligators in the far north within my children’s lifetime.”

An associate professor from the University of Calgary’s Earth Sciences department, Keith is the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment and one of the more outspoken proponents of geo-engineering as part of a fix for dangerous levels of climate change.
The director of the university’s Energy and Environmental Systems Group, Keith spoke of the nature of geo-engineering that makes it both a contentious and tempting prospect.
Put simply, Keith believes that injecting sulphur is a solution that “is fast, cheap and imperfect.” For all of these reasons, he believes that geo-engineering needs to be researched extensively—the sooner, the better.

“I don’t like to think about this, but it’s a question of risk management. The decision not to do research could be bad news in a couple of decades when you do want to do this.”

Geo-engineering, says Keith, is a backup plan that should not be relied on right now, but that should have the long-term research behind it just in case.

Keith recently confirmed that his current research is being funded by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, reported the Calgary Herald.

Besides the billionaire, there are others who share Keith’s optimism for this technique. McGill professor of economics Chris Green said that there is simply no way we can replace our current fossil-fuel energy sources anytime soon. The question of using all possible alternative tactics instead is not a question, he said, but a given.

Another issue raised at the conference was how to collectively manage geo-engineering experiments as they affect climate on a global scale.

“Whose hands are on the thermostat?” asked Alan Robock, professor and director of the meteorology program at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The issue is contentious, considering most geo-engineering tactics come with a high ecological price tag attached. Injecting substances into the stratosphere, for instance, can increase the risk of drought, already on the rise in large parts of the world.

“Even if you can alter global climate change, you can get large variations [of regional change],” said Robock. But however weary Robock is of the unintended effects and moral implications of geo-engineering, he isn’t convinced that the potential dangers of technological tinkering should rule out research.

Nigel Roulet, a McGill professor in the department of geography and former director of the School of Environment, says he firmly believes this type of experimentation is “premature” and that it is essential to consider the root causes of climate change, rather than turning to technological fixes.

“If we were to go down the road and think that geo-engineering was the magic bullet, then we wouldn’t get to the nut of the problem,” he argued.

According to Roulet, human activities have drastically altered the atmosphere, largely the result of dependency on fossil fuels, which are by definition a form of stored carbon, and changes in land use. Our addiction to oil, coal and meat in the post-industrial revolution is responsible for a large portion of the increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Without addressing the fundamental causes of climate change, geo-engineering begins to look like a band-aid on a deep wound—even if that band-aid is potentially accompanied by awe-inspiring sunsets behind the mountain. Fundamentally, all proponents and opponents of geo-engineering have come to the same conclusion regarding the human activities that have caused us to explore these kinds of fixes in the first place.

And, as Keith contends, there would be nothing worse than if “the knowledge that this is possible makes the impact of climate change look less fearsome, resulting in a weaker commitment to combating [it].”