Should They Teach Geoengineering in High School?
July 16, 2024 edition of Plan B Post.
For three years now, high school (secondary) students have been learning about geoengineering in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Teachers report high levels of student engagement and expressed a desire to teach the unit again. Peterson observes that many students have mentioned their enjoyment of the unit, stating it provided information that “actually mattered” and found it empowering to learn about actionable climate change solutions.
Should they teach geoengineering in high school? I’m all for it.
Glacial Scientists Call for Geoengineering Research
Professor Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago put it best when he said:
“Everyone who is a scientist hopes that we don’t have to do this research, but we also know that if we don’t think about it, we could be missing an opportunity to help the world in the future.
“Our argument is that we should start funding this research now, so that we aren’t making panicked decisions down the road when the water is already lapping at our ankles.”
Google Says No More Offsets While Microsoft Announces One of World’s Biggest-Ever Direct Air Capture Deals
The big tech giants, rich enough to reduce their environmental impacts and with a customer base that will reward them for it, have been the biggest buyers of carbon offsets. Now, they appear to be shifting focus towards the removal of carbon pollution from the air via direct capture.
Google wants to hit net-zero by 2030 by cutting emissions and actively removing carbon.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has signed a deal with 1PointFive to remove 500,000 metric tons of carbon over six years. That may be the biggest single direct air capture deal signed yet. 1PointFive is a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. The capture facility that will deliver on the Microsoft deal is under construction in Texas and will be running by 2025.
Angela Hepworth of UK green energy company Drax.
She says:
There is no question any more about should we be reducing CO2 emissions or should we be removing CO2. We absolutley need to do them both. We need to do them at scale, and we need to do them urgently.
Europe’s Co-Create Geoengineering Research Project Gets Under Way
The European Co-CREATE project to research when humans could responsiblly research Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) just issued its Newsletter Issue #1. The years-long project may find that events in the real world move faster than its prolonged schedule can keep up with.
Plan to “Dump Chemical into Ocean” Runs into Opposition in Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution want to dump 6,600 gallons of sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda or lye, into the ocean off the coast of Cape Cod.
The goal is to find out if this sort of intervention on a larger scale could increase the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon.
But local in the fishing and environmental communities are worried about possible negative effects.
TL;DR
The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.
Insurers may take a hit of about $2.7 billion from damage caused by Hurricane Beryl in the United States, close to $510 million in the Caribbean, and $90 million in Mexico.
And fossil fuel companies have used three distinct narratives to undermine climate action over five decades: “Solution Skepticism,” “Policy Neutrality,” and “Affordability and Energy Security.”
Las Vegas Heat Cooks S’Mores on Car
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and keep up your good work.