An alarming but thought provoking piece from climate scientists in the latest edition of Oceanography titled A Very Inconvenient Truth .
They argue that governments have under estimated the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and say we are going to have to resort to some drastic solutions to save the planet.
According to their analysis, United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report, released in 2007, is way too optimistic. They say that even if greenhouse gas emissions were to suddenly drop, we would still see temperatures increase by 2.4°C by the end of the century.
"Therefore, we can anticipate that GHG concentrations will continue to rise for at least the first half of the twenty-first century before eventually stabilizing,'' they write. And the problem, they say, is it's irreversible. "Once atmospheric temperature reaches equilibrium at a certain peak-overall GHG concentration, it will not drop markedly for the next thousand years even as GHG concentrations decline."
This means that policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not work on their own. What's needed, they say, is to implement these policies in conjunction with controversial methods of geo-engineering.
There are all sorts of geo-engineering proposals, many of them weird and wacky. They include things like spraying sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere which basically create the effect of cooling the earth after a volcano erupts, seeding clouds to relieve droughts, encouraging plankton growth, and carbon capture and storage in the form of burying carbon-rich biomass or using biochar for fuel. Some of the more bizarre proposals include painting all roofs white to reflect sunlight and placing thousands of space mirrors in near-Earth orbits to reflect sunlight. The Treehugger blog offers some insights into geo-engineering.
Is there a technological fix to climate change? One wishes it were that simple. The problem with geo-engineering is that there might be all sorts of side effects. For example, pumping sulphur into the stratosphere might deplete ozone levels, and releasing reflective balloons into the atmosphere might create litter which would later kill wildlife. It's just too unpredictable and in any case, when humans are involved, it could result in negative environmental consequences.
On the other hand, the authors make the excellent point that we need to start thinking of other solutions. The policies now in place are not enough.
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