Harvard University is planning something incredibly ambitious: the largest geoengineering study ever.
You’ve probably heard the term “geoengineering”. It’s relatively common among the chemtrail crowd, so you might associate it with… well, tinfoil hats and someone claiming they’re Jesus. It’s more than chemtrails and conspiracy theories, though–and it’s also kind of terrifying. In short, it’s a “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems.” We depend on those systems to live, so screwing around with them is a little unsettling.
Unless you’re part of a pretty small group of very vocal people (which somehow includes the president and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency) you agree with 97% of the world’s leading researchers when they say that we’re causing the climate to change far faster than it should be, and our massive carbon output is the main culprit. Many have come out and said that it’s basically too late, though. The wheels of our changing climate are already spinning too fast, and many researchers believe that they’re spinning out of control. We’re just along for the ride, trying to figure out how to stay on the track.
“…Part of the time scale of climate change is the time scale of the energy systems on which our society is built,” explained Daniel P. Schrag, a Professor of Geology, Environmental Science, and Engineering at Harvard. “Switching our energy system from a fossil fuel-based one like it is today to a non-fossil energy system would take, at the very least, many many decades, and probably much more than a century and tens of trillions of dollars. That’s just for the US alone.”
So what does that mean? Well, it means that researchers are looking at other solutions to go along with a reduction in carbon emissions.
“Many of us who have looked at the energy systems and the climate system have a feeling that we may not actually be able to switch our climate system over in time to avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” Schrag continued. “This is why solar geoengineering, I think, is a very important thing to look at carefully.”
There are a more than few options (head over to Oxford’s Geoengineering Programme website to see some) when it comes to regulating our planet’s temperature, but Harvard plans on trying something called Solar Radiation Management. Basically, controlling how much of the sun’s energy actually makes it to earth, reflecting it back into space.
Stopping some of the sun’s energy before it reaches earth is one of the possibilities.
There are three main techniques for doing this. Here’s how Oxford describes them:
Albedo enhancement. Increasing the reflectiveness of clouds or the land surface so that more of the Sun’s heat is reflected back into space.
Space reflectors. Blocking a small proportion of sunlight before it reaches the Earth.
Stratospheric aerosols. Introducing small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some sunlight before it reaches the surface of the Earth.
That last one is the one Harvard is looking at. At a cost of around $20 million, researchers will spray water into the stratosphere. At about 12 miles up, they’re hoping that the water droplets will reflect sunlight back into space. If the water proves to be effective, they’ll try with calcium carbonates because of their higher reflective properties. Diamond dust is apparently in the running, as well, which would probably make for a seriously awesome rainbow.
Of course, this has a lot of people a little worried. When it comes to the climate–which is one of the most complicated systems on earth–trickle down effects are nearly impossible to predict. Frank Keutsch, a Professor of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science, has a very reasonable explanation for why we need to give solar geoengineering a shot, despite how scary it may seem. “We need to find out and try and quantify aspects as soon as possible,” he said “The worst scenario that we want to be in is that in 20 years down the road, we find ourselves in a situation where we say that the rate of change from climate change is so big that the cost to humans and the environment is unacceptable, and we are starting to be forced into a situation to do something to try and slow the rate of change.”
The University plans on beginning small-scale tests in the coming months, and it’s a scary project even to those involved. “To me, solar geoengineering is terrifying,” said Professor Schrag. “We’re talking about an engineering project that would affect every living thing on this planet. The possibility that something could go wrong is really scary… and yet, as scary as that is, as uncertain as some of the impacts of solar geoengineering may be, I think the evidence is clearer and clearer that not doing solar geoengineering and letting climate change proceed may be actually worse as an alternative.”
