Geo engineering and climate control

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.
Specific technologies include
- Solar geoengineering or ‘dimming the sun’ by spraying sulfates into the air to reflect sunlight back into space;
- Ocean fertilization or the dumping of iron or urea to stimulate phytoplankton growth to absorb more carbon;
- Cloud brightening or spraying saltwater to make clouds more reflective and more.

The November 2022 assessment by the Climate Action Tracker says that, on the basis of current policies and actions, the 2100 temperature will rise by 2.70C from the preindustrial average and about 1.50C from the 2022 level and will continue to increase after 2100.
The implementation gap for 2030 is close to 50 per cent.

The future generations will face severe and relatively long heat episodes, floods, droughts and water uncertainty, more storms, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, threatens the ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic, melts the permafrost in Siberia and releases vast quantities of carbon and seriously modifies the monsoon.

Recent meetings of the Climate Convention, including the one in Egypt, failed to improve the inadequate mitigation agenda that has come out of the Paris Agreement.
Geo-engineering basically compensates for the significant shortfall in mitigation options that are necessary to keep temperature rise below the agreed target level.

Capturing carbon from emissions in high emission plants, like those producing electricity, steel or cement is a geo-engineering option without any significant cross-border effects.
Planting of aerosols in the stratosphere causes atmospheric cooling, either by directly reflecting incoming solar radiation or indirectly through their impact on clouds. They are short-lived in the atmosphere and more regionally variable relative to longer-lived emissions, like carbon dioxide. Shortcomings include
- Uncertain impact and crossborder effect.
- Very little scientific data to assess the impact and the uncertainty.
- Stratosphere aerosol injection (SAI) and other measures for solar radiation modification (SRM) are, at present, largely theoretical in nature.
- Side effects like impact on precipitation or the ozone layer are not yet assessed.

If these geo-engineering options are to be considered legitimate there must be two crucial moves to bring countries together.
- Setting up a cooperative scientific research process to analyze available information for major volcanic eruptions that altered solar radiation and to plan and evaluate pilot experiments, which must be multilaterally approved.
- Agree on a global agreement that prohibits unilateral action and sets up a process for multilateral agreement on geo-engineering initiatives.
- A global move on geo-engineering is a precautionary measure and should not dilute the pressure on major emitters to do more to reduce their carbon emissions.

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