Unmasking the controversy: Geoengineering climate change
There's a lot of misinformation and conspiracies out there about geoengineering, so let's clear the air.
For years researchers have been looking for viable solutions to our current climate crisis. As the years go by without any significant progress being made to counteract climate change, some researchers have started to think ‘bigger’.
Geoengineering may be a term you’ve heard on social media or in the news. It’s the large-scale manipulation of climate systems, using human-made technology to emulate natural processes, often taking place in the atmosphere.
A popular example of geoengineering in a small-scale practice is cloud seeding. Clouds are already made entirely of water vapour that has condensed onto dust and other particulate matter in the atmosphere. Cloud seeding is the human-driven process of introducing tiny silver iodide particles into the clouds, forcing them to condense even more and drop rain onto the landscape below.
In fact, Colorado has had a cloud seeding program running for the past 70 years to prevent and combat drought.
It may sound scary, that a compound like silver iodide would be introduced into our clouds, and then having those same clouds produce rain, but silver iodide is actually a more common compound than you may think—it’s often used in medical settings as an antiseptic.
Examples of large-scale geoengineering ideas to combat climate change are artificial carbon capture and the use of orbital mirrors to reflect incoming sunlight back into space. A more famous example is aerosol injections of sulfur dioxide particles, which would mimic the global cooling that occurs after large volcanic eruptions.
When a volcano explosively erupts, such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991 did, it will eject dust and sulfur dioxide particulates into the stratosphere, where they are dispersed globally. The sulfur dioxide acts as tiny mirrors in the stratosphere, reflecting incoming sunlight away from the Earth. This results in a global drop in temperatures, otherwise known as a volcanic winter. Following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, global temperatures between 1991 and 1993 dropped by half a degree.
RELATED: Is hacking the atmosphere a 'cool' idea to offset global warming?
It’s important to note that proposed large-scale climate change solutions using geoengineering are solely theoretical. The scale and cost to develop and test these proposed strategies is currently too large for researchers and policy-makers to realistically take on.
Aside from the scale and cost, other holdbacks to implementing geoengineering strategies include conspiracies and social controversies.
Conspiracies
Geoengineering, cloud seeding, and aerosol injections may sound like scary words, and the spread of misinformation online certainly doesn’t help.
The very definition of geoengineering has been misinterpreted to make people believe that its purpose is to maliciously control the weather and harm others—that harmful chemicals and toxins are being spread throughout the atmosphere.
However, as previously mentioned, the compounds used in cloud seeding and aerosol injections are safe compounds that are present in everyday life and phenomenon—they’re no more dangerous than the compounds present in the foods you eat.
The most popular conspiracy surrounding geoengineering is the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory. What these really are are contrail clouds, created by condensation of moisture in the air forming around hot plane engines and then rapidly cooling as the plane moves, forming a line of clouds. They are, essentially, as the name suggests, a condensation trail.
Contrail clouds also happen to have nothing to do with geoengineering because, despite them technically being human-made clouds, they are not altering the climate system.
WATCH: Science Behind Contrails: Why planes leave streaks across the sky
Moral hazards
A large concern for researchers, in particular, when it comes to geoengineering is that people will see a large-scale solution be implemented and therefore feel less inclined to take part in their own individual efforts to curb climate change.
This is what is called a ‘moral hazard’.
The same concerns also extend to large corporations and policies—that corporations may stop doing their part and that policymakers may revoke policies and funding for nature-based climate change solutions. Since these entities hold the largest responsibility to combating climate change, their sudden lack of contributions would be disastrous.
Essentially, researchers worry that people’s mindsets would shift into “[This] is solving the problem, so we can go back to the way things were before climate change policies.”
SEE ALSO: Researchers measuring city landfill emissions, climate impacts of waste
On another hand, many researchers argue that geoengineering cannot fully replace nature-based solutions. In fact, they say nature-based solutions would actually be more effective at mitigating the effects of climate change.
Geoengineering versus nature
Nature-based solutions involve protecting, restoring, and fortifying already existing environments and ecosystems. Examples that can help us mitigate the effects of climate change include restoring and protecting wetlands, grasslands, forests, and mangroves.
British Columbia's temperate rainforests and old growth trees are vital for natural carbon capture and storage in Canada, along with wetlands and other natural ecosystems. (Lindsay/Submitted)
Wetlands, grasslands, and forests are all vital to help capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. However, they are constantly at risk of destruction for human development.
Mangroves also serve these functions, but are most vital in protecting coastal ecosystems and communities from hurricanes and erosion. They create a fortifying barrier, significantly reducing the speed at which water will hit the land, or even completely blocking it.
A 2024 literature review analyzed over 20,000 peer-reviewed journal articles focusing on the economic and practical impacts of nature-based solutions. The authors found that 71 per cent of the studies they analyzed came to the conclusion that natural solutions were reasonably cost-effective strategies, unlike proposed geoengineering solutions.
They also found that out of the articles specifically comparing nature-based solutions to geoengineering solutions, 89 per cent concluded that the nature-based solutions were at least partially more effective at mitigating hazards associated with climate change, with the majority of that percentage being significantly more effective.
Thumbnail image credit to Dennis Mersereau, a writer at The Weather Network.
