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Climate geoengineering refers to large-scale schemes for intervention in the earth’s oceans, soils and atmosphere with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change, usually temporarily.
Types of Geoengineering
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The main categories of proposed geoengineering techniques are:
- Solar Radiation Management: SRM techniques attempt to reflect sunlight back into space, and include a range of ideas, from orbiting mirrors, tonnes of sulphates sprayed into the stratosphere, and modifying clouds, plants and ice to make them more reflect more sunlight.
- Carbon Dioxide Removal: These proposals posit that it’s possible to suck carbon out of the atmosphere on a massive scale, using a combination of biological and mechanical methods, from seeding the ocean with iron pellets to create plankton blooms to creating forests of mechanical “artificial trees”.
- Earth Radiation Management: ERM proponents suggest that negative effects of climate change can be offset by allowing heat to escape into space – for example, by thinning cirrus clouds.
Most support for geoengineering comes from a small group of elite engineers, and a handful of billionaires, joined by right wing politicians and many former climate deniers.
Characteristics
Geoengineering is a false solution to the climate crisis that aims to address the symptoms of climate change but ignores and enables the root causes to continue.
While there are a variety of geoengineering techniques and technologies (see: Technologies), each with their own ecological and social implications, a few important characteristics apply to all techniques:
- They don’t really exist: To date, the claims made about geoengineering techniques are purely based on speculation, and are – effectively by definition – not real technologies.
- Favoured by global north, backed by billionaires: Most of the political and financial support for geoengineering comes from a small group of elite engineers, a handful of billionaires, and a growing group of right wing politicians (many of them former climate deniers).
- Ecological impacts are huge: The sheer scale of many of of these proposals would have massive negative and unpredictable impacts on the environment – air, land and sea – which would be disproportionately borne by the global south.
Impacts and Critiques of Specific Techniques
Climate geoengineering proposals represent efforts to manipulate the climate on a global scale, but each proposed technique brings its own environmental and social impacts. We’re gathering as much information as possible about their anticipated effects.
For a discussion of specifics, visit our list of proposed geoengineering techniques.
For more in-depth overviews about geoengineering, visit our resources page.