November 12, 2015 Post 11

What is one thing I didn’t really know anything about before today’s class? Geoengineering. What is one thing I attempted to learn about and only sort of understand? Geoengineering.

            Jokes aside, I had never really encountered the term geoengineering before in my studies here at CSB/SJU. Sort of odd I imagine for someone who spends much of his academic time studying the climate, but it was nonetheless true unfortunately. Luckily, Troy Knight was able to shed some light on the subject for me amidst a large rambling of numbers behind climate science. Though a side tangent, as “[he] had no idea [he] was even going to cover this before [he] started to!” it was beneficial to teach us about the amount of carbon dioxide and the amount of energy coming to Earth from the sun because we knew how much of that radiation we have to offset in the future with geoengineering.

            So now that I’ve gone on my own side tangent let me get to our learned definition of geoengineering. Geoengineering, as defined by professor Knight, is any method used to counteract the effects of global warming. One important thing he noted about geoengineering is that it is akin to medicine as it “is like fighting the symptoms of an illness, but not searching for a cure.” That being said, it could still be an important step in solving the climate change problem because although it doesn’t solve the larger problems, it can slow the process, giving us more time for mitigation of emissions and eventual stoppage of the problem.

            Troy pointed out two main approaches of geoengineering: CO₂ removal and solar radiation management. CO₂ removal includes land sink methods (increase in forests, bio-char, and bio-energy and storage), ocean sink methods (solubility pump, ocean alkalinity, and biological pump), and air capture of CO₂ and storage. Solar radiation management includes the ideas of putting reflectors in space, using stratospheric aerosols, increasing cloud albedo, and increasing surface albedo. Now all of these have their apparent problems (I mean really, can you imagine flying giant mirrors into orbit?! That would be pretty cool but not really feasible, especially when you come to realization this process can’t be undone) but it is important to consider with the growing climate problem. One day the effects of climate change could be worse than the possible side effects of these geoengineering tactics, and who knows, the idea of sending giant space mirrors out there might not seem so crazy after all.