WASHINGTON, DC, Jan 26 – Here comes another cockamamie idea from the climate change brigade. They want us to put an end to those sunny days of spring and summer that we crave after the cold and cloudy days of winter in order to deal with global warming. That’s all we need in the aftermath of the gloom and doom of the pandemic.
The idea of shading the Earth from the sun — the controversial process called solar geoengineering to deal with climate change has been around for several years. But it’s an idea that is now being promoted as a desperately needed precaution that needs to be implemented sooner than later. Indeed, it would result in a cooler global environment. But at what price.
Solar geoengineering or solar radiation modification [SRM] can be employed in a variety of ways that artificially reflect solar energy — sunshine – back into space. A report in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed the potential risks of hastily employing SRM tactics to cool the Earth. “While climate science research has focused on the predicted climate effects of SRM, almost no studies have investigated the impacts that SRM would have on ecological systems. The impacts and risks posed by SRM would vary by implementation scenario, anthropogenic climate effects, geographic region, and by ecosystem, community, population, and organism. Complex interactions among Earth’s climate system and living systems would further affect SRM impacts and risks.”
SRM, according to the journal, Inverse, has one major benefit: it certainly can lower the Earth’s global temperature. That’s it. But the authors point out it has four important drawbacks: it could have devastating ecological consequences; it might not solve key climate change problems, and it might make things worse; it could have a negative effect on Earth’s ecosystems; and, quite simply, we don’t know enough about SRM. A goodly number of experts on the topic agree that we should not be in a hurry to try it out.
Just last week, 60 scientists and experts on the subject issued a warning: “Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some, it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at a planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system. We, therefore, call upon governments and the United Nations to take immediate and effective political control over the development of solar geoengineering technologies. Specifically, we advocate for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.”
To be sure, there are many who believe that climate change is not the crisis that it’s made out to be. Whether they are right or wrong is not the issue. Bill Pekny, the author of the book, A Tale of Two Climates: One Real, One Imaginary, argues that there is no climate crisis. Pekny is well-credentialed on the topic of “physical meteorology” based on his degrees he earned at Georgia Tech and DePaul University. As he put it in an article published in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News: “There are no real measurements to support the hypothesis that widespread human use of coal, oil and natural gas, and associated increases in atmospheric CO2, are causing or will cause dangerous upward changes in global temperatures.”
But Pekny is in the minority when it comes to climate change. Most scientists believe in man-made global warming.
Whatever your beliefs on the subject, the use of artificial deterrents such as solar radiation modification are untested and have the potential of causing more harm than good.