What are the potential effects of geoengineering on the weather, biodiversity, farms and ecosystems?
In cases, like Solar Radiation Management (SRM), “blocking sunlight by spraying chemicals like sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere or launching giant reflective parasols into orbit, could have a cooling effect. However, models show that such manipulations come with high-stakes risks: entire regions could face drought, and if SRM was started and then abandoned, global temperatures could rise very rapidly.” Can you guess why we have extreme heat temperatures rising quickly?
Ocean fertilization “consists of dumping tonnes of iron-rich dust into the ocean to stimulate plankton growth in the hopes that it will absorb carbon and then sink to the bottom of the sea. Studies based on computer models suggest that it probably will not have the desired effect, and could create “dead zones” by removing oxygen from the water.” Can you guess why thousands of dead fish were found along the Texas Gulf Coast because of a “low dissolved oxygen event”? More can be read in a past blog.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) “is considered a climate geoengineering technology in some cases. Its proponents claim that we can continue to burn fossil fuels if we just suck the carbon out of the air before it leaves the smokestack. CCS is extremely expensive and it’s not clear how well it actually works. If CCS becomes implemented at a large scale, where will the billions of tonnes of carbon be stored? Which communities and ecosystems will be put at risk of being poisoned when and if carbon dioxide, which can be lethal when concentrated, leaks? Furthermore, much of the current push to develop CCS is based on a desire to use captured CO2 for ‘enhanced oil recovery‘?” Aren’t they trying to get to humanity to the zero carbon world?
“So-called Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) like Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) claim that we can increase energy production while decreasing emissions. These plans are based on growing and burning massive, country-sized quantities of biomass and they ignore the carbon emissions and ecological impacts caused by tearing up millions of hectares of land over and over again to create these plantations.”
“Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is based on the false claim that burning biomass is “carbon neutral”. Proponents claim that capturing and burying carbon from such a “neutral” process will make it carbon “negative”. This faulty logic ignores a growing literature showing that CO2 emissions from most bioenergy processes are large – even larger than for fossil fuels when the impacts on ecosystems and soils are taken into account. Millions of hectares of land would have to be converted to growing trees and crops for bioenergy to implement large-scale BECCS.
So-called Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) are based on the wishful thinking that we can increase energy production while decreasing emissions. A wide range of technologies are being touted using this “win-win” rhetoric, including biofuels that result in biochar byproducts, using CO2 emissions to grow algae and various other processes. Some of these technologies have garnered much hype, but they are virtually nonexistant in reality.”