Scientists in developing nations
plan to step up research into dimming
sunshine to curb climate change, hoping to judge if a man-made chemical sunshade would be less risky than a harmful rise
in global temperatures.
Research into “solar geo-engineering”,
which would mimic big volcanic eruptions
that can cool the Earth by masking the
sun with a veil of ash, is now dominated by rich nations and universities
such as Harvard and Oxford.
“Developing countries must lead
on solar geo-engineering research,” the researchers wrote in a commentary
published on April 3 in Nature. “The overall idea (of solar
geo-engineering) is pretty crazy but it is gradually taking root in the world
of research,” lead author Atiq Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Centre for
Advanced Studies, told Reuters by telephone.
The solar geo-engineering studies would be helped by a new $400,000 fund
from the Open Philanthropy Project, a foundation backed by Dustin Moskovitz, a
co-founder of Facebook, and his wife, Cari Tuna, they wrote. The fund could
help scientists in developing nations study regional impacts of solar
geo-engineering such as on droughts, floods or monsoons, said Andy Parker, a
co-author and project director of the Solar Radiation Management Governance
Initiative.
Sulphur spray
Rahman said the academics were
not taking sides about whether geo-engineering would work. Among proposed
ideas, planes might spray clouds of
reflective sulphur particles high in the Earth's atmosphere. “The technique
is controversial, and rightly so. It is too early to know what its effects
would be: it could be very helpful or very harmful,” they wrote.
A U.N. panel of climate experts, in a leaked draft of a report about
global warming due for publication in October, is sceptical about solar
geo-engineering, saying it may be ”economically, socially and
institutionally infeasible.” Among risks, the draft obtained by Reuters says
it might disrupt weather patterns, could
be hard to stop once started, and might discourage countries from making a promised switch from fossil fuels to
cleaner energies.
Still, Rahman said most developed
nations had “abysmally failed” so far in their pledges to cut greenhouse gas
emissions, making radical options to limit warming more attractive. The world
is set for a warming of three degrees Celsius or more above pre-industrial
times, he said, far above a goal of keeping a rise in temperatures “well below”
2C under the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations.
Credit: The Hindu
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SRMGI: The Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative is an international, NGO-driven project that
seeks to expand the global conversation around the governance of SRM geoengineering research.
SRMGI runs engagement workshops in developing countries, trying to build
capacity for local experts, NGOs, public and policymakers to engage with the
issues SRM raises. We always work with local partners, including NGOs, universities, science academies and
even a national science museum. To date we have run 17 workshops in
14 different countries, including Bangladesh,
Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Senegal, South Africa and Thailand. We have also run side sessions at the
Biennial General Meeting of the Caribbean Academy of Science and at the Pacific
Climate Conference 2018.
SRM: Solar radiation management (SRM or solar geoengineering)
is a theoretical approach to
reducing some of the impacts of climate change by reflecting a small amount of inbound sunlight back out into space.
It is in the early stages of research, but it is already a controversial topic.
It is clear that SRM has the potential to be very helpful or very damaging for
those people and species most threatened by climate change, but it is very
unclear what its full effects would be.
SRM would not directly reduce concentrations greenhouse gases, and
therefore numerous expert reports have concluded that it could never be a complete solution to global warming and does not represent a substitute for
mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. However, they have also concluded
that it might be able to reduce some
climate risks to which Earth is already committed, though even for this
more limited purpose whether it can be net positive to humanity and the
environment is unclear.
For instance, if it could be made to work, SRM would be
the only known method for quickly stopping the rise in global temperatures. It
could even be used to cool the planet, should that ever be deemed necessary. As
such it might be able to reduce some damages while humanity decarbonizes the
global economy, or it might offer a method for dealing with some of the climate
risks associated with those greenhouse gases that have already been emitted to
the atmosphere. The uncertainties around the effects of SRM are large though,
and there is not nearly enough evidence yet available to evaluate whether use
of SRM would increase or decrease the impacts of climate change, and where.
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| How Solar Geo-Engineering may work? |
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