Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Geoengineering: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?


Geoengineering danger: Experts have increasingly warned against manipulating Earth’s natural systems




Geoengineering is a deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to reverse the impacts of climate change.

Geoengineering has steadily shifted over the last few decades from the margins towards the mainstream of climate discourse.

While past experiments such as LOHAFEX (an ocean iron fertilisation experiment to see if iron can cause algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) and SPICE (a research project that aimed to assess the feasibility of injecting particles into stratosphere from a tethered balloon to manage solar radiation) were halted, other projects of various sizes have emerged recently in an aspirational effort to undo the damage caused by anthropogenic climate change.

Geoengineering is a deliberate, large-scale intervention carried out in the Earth’s natural systems to reverse the impacts of climate change, according to the Oxford Geoengineering Programme. This involves techniques to physically manipulate the global climate to cool the planet.


These techniques fall primarily under three categories: Solar radiation management (SRM), carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and weather modification.






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