Climate Change

Our responsibilities for managing the environment is growing at chaotically regularised pace which makes us a better human than decades before. It is with great dedication that the environment is cleaned, recycled, intervened, transformed and reduced by architecting and monitoring the atmosphere of earth. European Union came up with a plan in the 1990s to introduce carbon tax in countries to regulate pollution from motor-vehicles and industries. During the same time, the European Commission was faced with issues from industry lobbying and the carbon tax reform was cancelled. In Canada, the Supreme Court is deciding carbon pricing and specifically pricing for pollution in the 2020s, the case is still going on.

It has been predicted in a 2007 paper the global mean temperature rise of about 4°C in 2100. We must be cautious of what we do to impact our earth’s atmosphere, otherwise we may have to resort to Carbon Dioxide Removal, in short CDR, which uses techniques such as Afforestation and direct air capture to reduce the impact. CDR is a phenomenon which takes years to implement. CDR is not affluent on costs required to deploy. Some countries enable CDR by enhancing natural sinks in order to ease the effect of rise of global mean temperature. Otherwise, it may affect the existence of a species and cause terrible overhead of management with damage to crops or environment. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is an effective method to reduce greenhouse gases emissions to the earth’s atmosphere.

Another technique that is widely used is Solar Radiation Management (SRM). In such a scenario, the light coming from the Sun is partially reflected to maintain the radiation balance in earth’s atmosphere. Light reflected is radiated in the opposite direction, thereby, reducing the solar incident light intensity on the earth’s surface. In higher latitude areas, where the incident light is less than the equator, it is easier to maintain warmer winters and colder summers. One of the techniques of using SRM is Stratospheric Aerosol Injections (SAI), which does the job of seasonality changes in the atmosphere. Using injected aerosols in the stratosphere, it is possible to control the light from the sun and add a cap to the light intensity such that it impacts the climate in the long run. It is difficult to control the climate temporarily using SAI and the one that replaces it is MCB (Marine Cloud Brightening). Marine cloud brightening is a technique that aggregates cloud to block the sunlight and maintain the temperature temporarily.

The combination of CDR and SRM is an effective technique to remove green-house gases. Using electric propulsion and drone technology we remove the green-house gases and transform them into usable forms. The cost of implementation of such a technique is high but with drone technology and using methods involving electrical and magnetic fields for electric propulsion the cost is slightly reduced. Most countries are accepting CDR and SRM together as the technique to reduce carbon footprint in the air.

The technology with SRM balances between stratospheric aerosol injections and marine cloud brightening to maintain the global rise in temperature and prevent the melting of polar ice caps. The recent closure of Ozone layer is a technique which did use a similar CDR and SRM technique to close the ozone layer. The intervention strategy must be well planned and laid out in order for effective control and monitoring. Illegal burning of materials must be avoided in order to reduce the carbon footprint. This research based organisation GeoMIP is The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project which emphasises about management of geoengineering tasks that constitute SRM or CDR like activities as well as involve termination of poor SRM activities such as SAI and enhance the methodology for planetary manipulation. We should emphasise the development of programmes such as GeoMIP that enables collaborative development to save our Earth.