New Voice

There are reams of words. Whole spillages of words delivered into the ether of the internet acknowledging the fear of humanity at our capacity to wreak lasting damage on our society. Just read the pages of the climate project or the climate count down, on Greenpeace. Whole earthquakes of tiny words. Such is the embrace of the people and the fear. Bill Bryson, in his revelatory work of simple genius – A Short History of Nearly Everything – discusses at length the shocking power of the earth to unleash damage on the surface of the planet. In fact it incorporates a number of chapters. There is as seriousness to that power. I think that it is always present, and can never be fundamentally shifted. Utilised, though, is another thing entirely.

Imagine a sea of biological organisms that are bred solely to capture carbon from the atmosphere. That is, apparently, not too distant a possibility. These and a number, what can only be termed as vast, other engineering wonders are mixing around the political and scientific landscape seeking a home, and awaiting the correct level of funding to become a reality. These ‘projects’ are the burgeoning new world of geoengineering. Caveat: I say burgeoning, and new, but really they have been around for an extraordinary length of time; but have only lately been confirmed as a major step in tackling our climate problem. Their ultimate goal is the protection of our climate from the adverse effects of our buildup of carbon, but delivered in the swiftest possible timeframe. This swiftness is both bold and somewhat reckless, but the thought is, we may require swift and reckless at some point down the line.

Besides the aforementioned multiple organism engineering, there are a few main methods being tested: cloud seeding (first publically used – supposition alert – by the Soviet Union to deflect the weather systems pushing north from the Ukraine following Chernobyl) is a method by which clouds are deliberately formed. The purpose of this seems to be that consistent cloud cover would deflect significant amounts of sunlight, and thus reduce (significantly) the corresponding heating. It is thought that this could be managed both quickly, and to an absurd degree. To my mind Ireland is automatically eliminated from this requirement, as we achieve it naturally. It, of course, brings with it the issue of poor growing seasons for certain crops, and the withering problem of murdering organisms that demand voluminous sunlight. There also exists the possibility of planting artificial trees. This is currently taking place, but to a lesser degree than is envisaged in planet saving mode. This effectively would work in tandem with the current carbon cycle of carbon capture by trees. The issue, in the same way that a tree has this issue, is that the carbon is only stored until it is set free. This happens all too commonly across the world at present where overzealous corporations and developers burn into forested woodland to make room for road networks, and thereby free the captured carbon. It is both ruinous to the habitat (destroying multiples of life) and our planet.

There are many other types of geoengineering (not least the Russian idea of building a massive sun blocking device in the outer atmosphere to shade part of the planet) and I will continue on this topic as write through these blogs; but the aforementioned give a feel for what is being engendered. They are an interesting line in our assault on warming. As I said previously they bring with them the potential for possible mishaps, or indeed, many side effects that have disasters consequences. But they work in their swiftness; and can, in many cases, achieve powerful reductions in the rising temperatures However, this topic has filtered across the media in the last two years bringing awareness to the subject and with it it’s most troublesome aspect: the potential alacrity with which some geoengineering projects could have an impact as somewhat reduced the necessity for immediate action on carbon reduction.  Scientists worry that successes in cloud seeding and other methods could loosen the greening of the world’s political framework. And as any scientist would express (or indeed any science writer) geoengineering in almost every case is a temporary halt at best – while at worst, it could be too little too late.