With EDF Support, Geoengineering Marches into Mainstream: 'The Plan B Post'
The Plan B Post is your free, weekly update on cutting carbon pollution and cooling the earth with geo-engineering. June 12, 2024 edition.
In the biggest news of the week, The New York Times’ Christopher Flavelle reports that geoengineering continues to march towards the environmental mainstream, with the Environmental Defense Fund announcing it will finance research into technologies that could artificially cool the planet.
No monetary value is given, but the focus is clearly on research, not deployment.
Dr. Lisa Dilling, associate chief scientist at E.D.F., is running the project and says, “Our goal is information. This is something that I don’t think we can just ignore.”
The Economist calls giant curtains to keep the planet cool “zany” and “too risky.” NASA climate scientist Ken Mankoff has organized a series of polar geoengineering workshops at large science conferences to discuss the curtains and other methods of slowing the ongoing meltoff of the world’s ice caps.
The solution could be a giant curtain designed to protect as much as 80 km of glaciers from contact with warmer seawater.
Or you could pump water onto the glacier so it freezes and builds up new layers of ice, like Dutch startup Artic Reflections.
The Economist points out that it won’t be easy. Compared to reducing solar radiation, polar geoengineering would be much more expensive and difficult. It also requires consensus among the 57 Artic treaty member countries. But never say never.
Friends of The Plan B Post, Earthshot, have launched their Fortnite island. It’s an environment in the world’s third most played video game where plugging old oil wells and scooping up nasty canisters of planet-warming HFCs is built into the gameplay, so kids learn about climate solutions while having fun.
Earthshot co-founder Mark Bernstein told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re putting cleantech where young people are—on games.”
Earthshot has also published a murder mystery / romance graphic novel that promotes EV usage. I have read it, and it’s a lot of fun. Get it here.
The LA Times’ Sammy Roth highlighted that it’s dangerous to put environmental purists in charge of decision making when compromise is needed. Solving the environmental catastrophes we face will come with costs. Roth says, if we have to raze thousands of Joshua trees to build a desperately needed solar project in the California desert, that sucks — and… call the bulldozers.
This is straight from Roth’s June 4th piece:
We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It’s easy to say, “Don’t kill Joshua trees; build solar farms somewhere else; fix the climate some other way.” It’s hard to say: “Making up for our past mistakes requires sacrifice; this is a burden we must bear.” It’s even harder that the past mistakes weren’t so much “ours” as they were ExxonMobil’s.
But this is the reality we face. This is our moon shot.
European climate analyst Jakob Gomolka writes that humanity should swear off any geoengineering because it is unlikely to undo the climate damage already done. It could also generate disparate regional impacts and thus lead to conflict and even war, he says.
I find his analysis unpersuasive, as he underplays both the potential benefits of geoengineering and the dire nature of the climate crises we face without it.
Good research into geoengineering is necessary so we can accurately measure its risks and potential before it becomes more urgent.
We need to know if the science will reveal if geoengineering is too risky or if it’s too useful to ignore. Then we can decide whether and how to deploy.
Meanwhile, the brave souls on the City Council in Alameda, California, have voted to shut down the "cloud-brightening" equipment testing that University of Washington researchers had begun.
Local opposition seems to be influenced by “chemtrail” conspiracy theorists and health fears.
Geoengineering runs the risk of getting further caught up in conspiracy theories. It involves science that most people don’t understand and quite a few refuse to accept.
Some insight into how to win over the public to geoengineering comes from the just-published second edition of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report. It was produced by Oxford’s Smith School and numerous collaborators.
As a communicator, I found the section on communications most fascinating.
It found that “perceived naturalness” is a key to public approval of carbon dioxide removal.
Other factors that drive public approval include the impact on ecosystems, trust in relevant actors, and perceived affordability.
Explaining geoengineering as a natural process will make it easier for people to understand and approve of it.