Are artificial trees and sunshields in humanity's future?

Is geoengineering a rational solution to the climate crisis we are facing?  Seeing how humanity's unintentional experiment with the climate produced results we are struggling to understand, does it make sense to intentionally manipulate the climate to 'fix' the problem?  With the alternative being raising taxes on fossil fuels, some economists are running the numbers on whether geoengineering the climate would be cheaper in the long-run.

Some ideas being tossed about are more sane than others, but the vast majority of them seem simply illogical to the common sense solution.  We need to admit that fossil fuels are the problem and aggressively work to scale down our use of them; but can we do this in time and will this solve the problem fully?

The argument for geoengineering goes something along these lines (Worldechanging):

• Climate change is real and worse than we thought.
• Humanity will not or cannot reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, or will not or cannot reduce them enough in time to stave off catastrophe.
• Therefore, we need to find other approaches to lowering the planet's temperature and/or pulling greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, and the best way to do this is through mega-scale geoengineering.
• Anyone who opposes this argument is unrealistic and afraid of the adult responsibilities of planetary management and will lead us over the cliff into runaway climate change.

As humanity's efforts to reduce emissions seems to be failing, certain fringe ideas seem to be gaining traction (at least in the media).  Professor John Shepherd, former Royal Society chair said, "It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions, we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases. Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems - yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them.  Geoengineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change". (Royal Society documents on geoengineering can be found here.)

The Insitute of Mechanical Engineers (IME) in the UK recently published their 12-month study of geoengineering's role in fighting climate change.  IME's position on geoengineering can be summarized as follows:  "Geo-engineering involves large-scale human intervention in the Earth’s climate system by either removing CO2 from the atmosphere or reducing the amount of solar radiation that is absorbed by the atmosphere. Despite this, there is no signifcant public funding of research into the potential for geo-engineering to combat global warming or its practical feasibility." (The rest of IME's position can be found here.)

Traditionally, these roles of solar radiation reflection and CO2 absorbtion were handled by the natural systems of the planet.  They were performed regularly by Mother Nature free-of-charge for the benefit of humanity.

We are still on the brink of destroying the fundamental processes that regulate conditions that make life on earth possible; we still have time to act.  The fact that geoengineering is gaining ground in scientific communities is testament to the fact that we are not acting fast enough to save our own skins.

Should we be expending political and financial capital on geoengineering, or should we be dedicating ourselves to a policy and way of life of zero emissions now?

The geoengineering discussion has been simplified recently to two major components.  First, we need to construct some kind of sunshield to block out solar radiation.  Next, we need to develop some kind of method to suck up the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere (seeing how we continue to destroy the atmosphere and the forests that perform these functions, quite well I might add).  To this end, engineers have proposed pumping seawater droplets into the sky, painting building rooftops white, and erecting artificial trees or installing algae photbiorectors on buildings as the most sane solutions that will essentially buy humanity time (so we can continue to debate the issue ad infinitum?).

Artificial trees are close to being ready for comercial deployment.  They have already been tested and are "very advanced in their design in terms of their automation and in the components that would be used.  They could, within a relatively short duration, be moved forward into mass production and deployment."  The trees capture carbon dioxide using a filter.  The CO2 is removed from the filter and stored. The reason that these artificial trees are being considered is that they "could remove thousands of times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than an equivalent sized real tree". They have also proposed installing algae photobioreactors on buildings to absorb urban emissions. (BBC)

In terms of solar reflection, giant space mirrors have essentially been ruled out, and spraying sea droplets into the sky is in.  "It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans; this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air," according to researchers in the US and UK.  (PhysicsWorld) 

In addition to seeding clouds, painting rooftops white can increase reflectivity.  The program, dubbed 'cool roofs' "can achieve far bigger benefit, the equivalent of several trillion dollars worth of CO2 reductions, since it can increase the reflectivity of the planet, thereby directly reducing the absorption of incoming solar radiation and hence planetary warming. The proposed strategy is equivalent to taking the world's approximately 600 million cars off the road for 18 years". (ClimateProgress)

This is what our engineers and scientists have come up with in order to treat the symptoms of climate change in case fossil fuel companies and politicians continue to fight and delay implementing the real changes necessary to preserve a living ecosystem for future generations.

Our species is now being presented with the option of paying for artificial reflectivity and CO2 recycling (two processes that will be described in the future in our stories of folklore as free natural processes of the past), or enter a period of broad decline for all species including our own.

Climate change is expensive; we were warned of this.  Economists recommending geoengineering solutions instead of higher taxes may be underestimating the effects of their proposals.  "Playing with the Earth's climate is a dangerous game with unclear rules.  We need more direct ways to tackle global warming, including energy efficiency, reduced consumption, and investment in renewable energy sources." (ScienceDaily)

Energy efficiency, reducing consumption, and renewable energy are logical paths toward a solution.  It just so happens that these three solutions cut into the profits of established industries with vast amounts of lobbying power in the world's governments. 

Geoengineering would allow these industries to continue on with business as usual for another few decades before we begin the Big Experiment of intentionally manipulating the Earth's climate.  When that day comes, I hope we understand the effects of our actions better than we have up until now.

For more info:   Top science body calls for geoengineering 'plan B'; NewScientist. Engineering better than tax on climate: Economists; Reuters.

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