Hello and welcome to my blog looking at whether
Geo-Engineering is a feasible solution to climate change. I hope this blog will
explore some interesting topics within Geo-Engineering to investigate in more
depth what methods may be suitable for the human race.
At this stage I have some knowledge on
Geo-Engineering (but not extensive) but from what I do know, I am sceptical
about it. There always seems to be some downsides to the methods of
Geo-Engineering I have heard about already and this is one of the main reasons I
have decided to write my blog on this topic. I want to challenge my initial
opinions to see if Geo-Engineering is in fact a viable solution (or mitigation) for human induced climate change. Further to this, I chose this topic as I
believe something drastic must be done about anthropogenic (human induced)
climate change and I want to know whether Geo-Engineering may just be the
solution humanity is in need of.
I thought it important in this first blog post to outline why
Geo-Engineering may be necessary in the future by looking at climate change and
highlighting some of the topics which I wish to cover as this blog goes on. Below
in Figure 1 is a graph that shows Carbon Dioxide in parts per million (the top
line) and temperature of the Antarctic (°C, the bottom line). As it is possible
to observe, CO₂ levels have never been as high as they are now. In fact, they
have just recently passed 400ppm in March 2016 which is
far greater than any level experienced over the past 650,000 years. It can only
be as a result of human activity – mainly the burning of fossil fuels releasing
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
 |
| Figure 1: Reconstruction of past atmospheric CO2 concentration (top line) and temperature reconstruction for the Antarctic (bottom line). |
Geo-Engineering is in its early stages of investigation and
I believe it is particularly important to get it right before we as a planet do
something we regret. There are a number of different Geo-Engineering techniques
that have been mentioned that I will look into in future blog posts. Box 1
below comes from a 2008 paper on potential Geo-Engineering solutions and describes potential methods clearly
and succinctly. This goes to show that there are many different possibilities
under the concept of Geo-Engineering but may not all be viable or effective. It
is clear that all these ideas are only in the research phase – highlighting why
I hope this blog will be looking at something relatively new and different.
 |
| Box 1: Geo-engineering schemes under discussion. |
I hope this blog will be interesting and informative and
will attempt to look at a topic that is new and in need of investigation. I
plan to look at some of these Geo-Engineering schemes in more detail in future
posts as well as some other aspects relating to global environmental change and
whether there is a need for Geo-Engineering.
In the article where you have referenced the box, the author said 'All other properties being equal (efficacy, cost and risk), schemes that work in the short term are preferable over medium to long-term ones. ' Would you say that the geo-engineering schemes that work in the short term are better than the medium and long-term ones?
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting question! All things being equal, I do believe that geo-engineering schemes that work in the short term are more advantageous. This is because climate change is occurring very rapidly and therefore the response must be equally quick. Having said this, I feel that efficacy, cost and risk for geo-engineering methods will never be equal and therefore the focus should be more on these properties rather than whether they work in the short, medium or long term.
Delete