The battle rages this week over which is riskier: stopping global warming or not.
August 7, 2024 edition of Plan B Post.
This week, the world’s top engineer makes his case to The New York Times, against fierce opposition.
This week, the world’s leading geoengineering scientist took his case for stopping global warming by releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere straight to The New York Times. David Keith of the University of Chicago thinks climate change is too dangerous for us not to at least run practical trials of how to buy time by preventing the worst effects of climate change while we get our carbon emissions under control.
(To learn more about Keith’s preferred technique of stratosphere aerosol injection, see last week’s Plan B Post: “Climate tech’s biggest trouble-maker: an interview with Andrew Song of Make Sunsets.”)
Opposing Keith are the many who fear geoengineering’s unintended consequences and moral hazard, or who feel we have to reform humanity first.
Keith himself is adamant. “There certainly are risks, and there certainly are uncertainties,” he said in the piece, “but there’s really a lot of evidence that the risks are quantitatively small compared to the benefits, and the uncertainties just aren’t that big.”
His former Harvard collaborator Frank Keutsch sees it differently.
“I compare stratospheric solar geoengineering with opiates,” said Keutsch.
“They only treat the symptom and not the actual cause. You can get addicted to it if you don’t actually address the cause. In addition, like any painkiller, you’re going to have side effects. And then there are withdrawal symptoms, and that’s termination shock.”
Whatever your thoughts, the Times story by David Gelles is well worth a read.
Scientists have found that humans might be able to halt global warming just by making it a bit more cloudy over the ocean. The researchers found the technique called marine cloud brightening, all by itself, could successfully keep global temperatures at 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level. The study was led by Walker Raymond Lee at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and is not yet peer-reviewed.
What is marine cloud brightening? This explanation from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Foundation is an easy read but also comprehensive.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has picked a climate friendly running mate in Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, according to Politico.
“When I hear people say, ‘You’re moving too fast’ — we can’t move too fast when it comes to addressing climate change,” Walz has said. “This idea of waiting is a luxury we do not have.”
Among Walz’s accomplishments is requiring utilities in his state to supply 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040.
In its latest carbon removal deal, Microsoft has agreed to purchase 80,000 metric tons of removals from a forestry project on some 50,000 gorgeous acres in Northern California. The project aims to restore and protect permanently a paradisiacal rainforest and salmon habitat. The lands will ultimately be returned to the traditional owners, the Yurok Tribe.
By 2050, Microsoft aims to remove enough carbon from the air to counteract its historical emissions.
It's getting so hot! California had 156 days in a row of 32.2°C (90°F) or higher temperatures in 2022. See Grace Toohey and Sandhya Kambhampati’s story in the LA Time. Meanwhile, four out of five Swedish glaciers may disappear by 2100.
Peter Paul Bunyard argues that we need to think bigger than the multi-trillion dollar effort to reduce carbon emissions and transition to green energy. We also must repair nature on a global scale, he says in his just-published book, Cooling Climate Chaos: A Proposal to Cool the Planet within Twenty Years.
His tools: regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, and a giant expansion of ecosystem restoration from a local to global scale. The result would restore the planet’s natural balance, reduce extreme weather, sequester CO2, and correct the gross inequity of our times.
It sounds fantastic (in both meanings of the word), but Bunyard admits it would take a massive realignment of political forces and public opinion. Despite the obstacles, I find Bunyard’s utopian vision to be beautiful.
Australia is funding the development of new technologies to capture CO2 and awarded some $43 million in grants this week. Two of the companies capture carbon dioxide emitted during cement production, while another produces battery grade lithium carbonate from carbon pulled out of the atmosphere. That seems promising.
Not just lip service. Most scientists have made changes to their personal lifestyles to reduce their climate impact. They drive less (69%), fly less (51%), and eat less meat (39%). That’s according to a survey of 9,000 scientists of all disciplines published this week in Science Daily.
A new organization hoping to bring rigour and credibility to carbon removal launched this week with funding by Bill Gates, through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gates’ climate-focused investment group. (Gates this week is 3/4 of the way towards raising $1 billion for Breakthrough’s next investment fund.)
Anu Khan Leads the new Carbon Removal Standards Initiative. The goal? To create standardized methods for measuring the effectiveness of carbon removal technologies. Gates' support helps ensure that the carbon removal industry can build credibility and scalability and thus make a significant dent in climate change.
And speaking of standards, 68% of corporate executives in the U.S. have admitted to greenwashing. Captain Renault said it best. “I’m shocked, shocked!”
This Oregon landfill is so large that they call it “the Great Pyramid of Benton County.” Now, it wants to expand, despite what the EPA has found are “explosive levels” of methane leakage. Over 20 years, methane traps 80-times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Should the state allow the Great Pyramid to double in size? And if not, where will all of Oregon’s trash go? Read Isobel Whitcomb’s excellent story on Canary Media.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and keep up the good fight.