09.09.2009

Geoengineered for growth

Jim Moody examines flawed schemes to alleviate climate change

A report published this month under the title Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty (Royal Society, London) has had a mixed reception, to say the least.

Its authors maintain that many of the proposals it examined are less than immediately applicable; all require further research to decide their feasibility or otherwise. So they say. Chaired by professor John Shepherd, the working group upon whose studies this report is based comprises professorial members from universities and institutes in the UK and North America, and are drawn mainly from the field of environmental science.

Geoengineering the climate reports on various schemes that have been posited to reduce global warming. They can be separated into two techniques: atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM), which reflects some of the sun’s light and heat back into space.

CDR techniques can include (this is not an exhaustive list) land use management to protect or enhance land carbon sinks; the use of biomass for carbon sequestration, as well as a carbon-neutral energy source; enhancement of natural weathering processes to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere; direct engineered capture of CO₂ from ambient air; the enhancement of oceanic uptake of CO₂, for example by fertilisation of the oceans with naturally scarce nutrients, or by increasing upwelling processes.

As the report acknowledges, “none has yet been demonstrated to be effective at an affordable cost, with acceptable side effects.” Of course, processes removing CO₂ from the atmosphere work only slowly and they are only of use if they go hand in hand with emissions reductions. Some of those within bourgeois politics who are lauding the technological approach would prefer to accentuate only the first part of this proposition.

As everyone knows, CO₂ is not the only greenhouse gas: that is, a significant additive to the atmosphere that has a deleterious effect on global warming. Methane (CH₄) has also to be considered in this context, even if its contribution to the problem is less than that of CO₂. It is certainly important to bear in mind the effects of non-CO₂ greenhouse gases and tropospheric aerosols, even though previously their effects have roughly cancelled each other out. (The troposphere is the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere, containing 75% of its mass and 99% of its water vapour and aerosols, both naturally occurring and human-made.)

Several quicker-than-CDR SRM techniques have been suggested. These would be relatively cheap and take only a few years to affect the climate. But their efficacy is dubious. They include increasing the surface reflectivity (albedo) of the planet by brightening human structures (eg, by painting them white), planting crops with a high reflectivity and covering deserts with reflective material; enhancement of marine cloud reflectivity; mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions by injecting sulphate aerosols into the lower stratosphere; placing shields or deflectors in space to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth.

Such methods would, however, create an artificial, approximate and potentially delicate balance between increased greenhouse gas concentrations and reduced solar radiation. This would then have to be maintained, potentially for many centuries. In addition, SRM techniques can have unpredictable regional impacts. Variability in weather systems, wind speeds and ocean currents produce results whose outcomes which are all extremely difficult, if not impossible, to model with any accuracy.

A practical experimental application of CDR was tried earlier this year in the Southern Ocean, north-east of the South Georgia islands, under the project title Lohafex. Carried out by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, and assisted by the National Oceanography Institute of India, Lohafex had, by mid-March, dumped 20 tonnes of iron sulphate over an area of 300 square kilometres of sea. The idea was that this would encourage algal growth, which it did, that the algae would take in large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and as algae died their remains would fall to the bottom of the ocean, together with the carbonates and other carbon compounds they incorporated. In fact, within a couple of weeks the algae were eaten by small copepods, which were in turn eaten by amphipods, a larger crustacean. Consequently, much less carbon dioxide was absorbed and therefore considerably less carbonate material deposited upon the ocean floor than had been hypothesised.

Despite the complete failure of the experiment, a company called Climos plans an even larger experiment covering 40,000 square kilometres of ocean, an area over 100 times greater than that of the Lohafex fiasco. If the quantity of iron sulphate or other iron salts to be dumped is scaled up compared to Lohafex, Climos will be spreading 2,500 tonnes across one or other of the world’s oceans. The effects are potentially very dangerous. The commercial reason for the venture is that funding through the financially more attractive global carbon market is in the offing if Climos demonstrates this technique can sequester large quantities of CO₂. Of course if it goes belly-up as far as the ocean environment is concerned, it will not be Climos that suffers the consequences; it will fall upon all of us.

Other suggestions that broadly come within the description of SRM techniques include setting a series of reflective plates into orbit around the Earth. These ‘patches on the sun’, it has been suggested, would rapidly decrease the level of sunlight falling upon the Earth and quickly result in global cooling. Similarly, shooting large amounts of sulphates into the ionosphere would replicate some of the results of volcanic eruptions, which blot out radiations from the sun and lessen the effects of greenhouse warming.

What we know is that human experimentation on the planet’s ecology and weather system is very likely to backfire. The consequences could well be catastrophic. Yet the fact that scientists and engineers have felt the need to put together Geoengineering the climate and a string of potentially suicidal proposals testifies to a growing realisation that the world’s governments cannot deliver effective measures needed to combat the danger of runaway climate change.

Pretty well everyone knows what is happening, but the ‘international community’ is seemingly powerless to do anything substantial about it because of the refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the system of capital itself. Capitalism relies on and imposes on all its actors the necessity of economic growth for the sake of economic growth.

Geoengineering the climate points out: “The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution to the problem of climate change.”

Human-made, or anthropogenic, climate change is now generally accepted as a scientific truth, something that the overwhelming majority of bourgeois politicians have had to acknowledge. But what they refuse to do is to upset the working of the capitalist system.

The economy (ie, capital) must not suffer - that is their mantra. Hence whatever ‘solutions’ they might agree on are always minimalist compared with what is required and are constantly undermined by a system that by its very nature is in constant search for growth. That is why environmental science is implicitly anti-capitalist and why more and more environmental scientists are openly looking for alternatives to the system itself.