A Globalist Billionaire Pitches Geoengineering While Others Propose Putting Particles into the Atmosphere and Space

Geoengineering is already happening here on Earth in the first direct-air-capture (DAC) carbon dioxide (CO2) projects that hope to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the atmosphere. These facilities aren’t capturing CO2 from the smokestacks of existing manufacturing and power facilities, but rather from ambient air. That’s why I classify them as geoengineering rather than putting them in the same category as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and carbon capture and utilization (CCUS).

DAC is a reasonable technological solution to the CO2 problem that is seen as responsible for rising global atmospheric temperatures. It isn’t adding something to the atmosphere to block sunlight, attempting to seed oceans to neutralize acidification, or trying to create a sunshade in space to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the planet. These types of projects are far more problematic and as our nations fail to decarbonize, increasingly are technology fixes that could lead to unintended consequences.

So I share with you three geoengineering headlines that recently caught my attention. Are these solutions to climate change, or a means to put off doing the harder stuff to get global warming under control?

George Soros Proposes Geoengineering At Global Security Conference

What truly surprised me in the last week was billionaire George Soros speaking to those in attendance at the Munich Security Conference where he talked about using geoengineering to control the “inexorable advance of climate change.”

Soros is a philanthropist that supports progressive, democratic and left-wing causes around the world. But in his speech, he focused on the threat to the Greenland ice sheet and how its melting would imperil billions living on coastlines as seas rose up to seven metres.

Soros has been an active supporter of climate change groups. Most of these don’t preach geoengineering as a solution. Most believe governments and businesses need to act to end fossil fuel use to stop global warming.

Soros, however, has become fascinated by a plan from Sir David King, the founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. King wants to cool down the Arctic by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. This would increase cloud cover and thereby decrease solar energy reaching the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, and other lands in the polar region. It would be like lowering the thermostat in a freezer to stabilize ice sheets that currently are melting at an alarming rate. Lower Arctic temperatures would also stabilize weather patterns over much of the Northern Hemisphere and would correct the current meandering of the Jet Stream.

King’s idea is to place ships strategically within the Arctic Circle and have them pump aerosols into the atmosphere through taller-than-typical ship smokestacks. Alternatives to this scheme have been proposed by others using airplanes equipped with aerosols to spread sun-blocking materials into the high troposphere and the low stratosphere.

King has other geoengineering projects to propose including using ships to dump iron-filled sand into the ocean to create kelp forests which would serve two purposes, allow the ocean to absorb more CO2 while also addressing the problem of ocean acidification.

Blue Dot Change Proposes Iron Seeding Air Over the Ocean

This second proposal comes from a Palo Alto, California startup, Blue Dot Change. It wants to launch a pilot project to release iron-rich particles into the air over the ocean. The goal here is not to tackle CO2 emissions but rather methane (CH4). On its website, the company states that CH4 from nature and human activity is responsible for one-third of the rise in atmospheric temperatures since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It notes that nature has a way of taking care of the CH4 it produces, but not the extra amounts coming from human industrial, energy, and transportation sources.

Blue Dot Change sees the ocean as the best place to experiment with removing CH4 because it provides “a lot of room to work with.” The technical fix includes a catalyst of iron chloride dust which would be discharged into the air from ships’ smokestacks. The chlorine in the catalyst would cause the CH4 to dissipate more rapidly than it does naturally.

The company notes that the catalyst would pose no harm if an airborne quantity drifted over land. Depending on weather conditions, it would remain in the air for up to ten days after release. A test run is planned for later this year.

Moon Dust Proposed To Solve Earth’s Climate Crisis

The third geoengineering proposal involves mining the Moon. It is the latest variation on a theme to put sun-shading materials between the Earth and Sun to cool the planet. MIT proposed space bubbles to reflect sunlight. Others have proposed satellites with huge sunshades. All of these require launching materials from Earth.

The new wrinkle is to launch from the Moon and spread millions of tons of dust between Earth and the Sun at a Lagrange point approximately 1.6 million kilometres (1 million miles) away where it would remain in a stable orbit and become a permanent partial sun shield.

The proposal comes from a theoretical astrophysicist, Ben Bromley, at the University of Utah, who has published his idea in an article appearing in PLOS Climate. It is entitled “Dust as a solar shield” and advocates a solar radiation management solution using material harvested from the Moon that has suitable refractive characteristics. Using the Moon would be more economical than launching from Earth because of a lower cost in terms of fuel to escape the weaker gravity of the former. The amount of material needed, Bromley writes, would exceed by one hundred times the mass that we have already sent to space. He calls his proposal a “fine-tuned dimmer switch” for reducing the impact of GHGs in the atmosphere, a literal moonshot for our planet.

A Final Comment

Geoengineering is the equivalent of locking the front door after a thief has robbed you. We know the anthropogenic causes of climate change. We know that reducing our collective carbon footprint is doable. We have alternative ways to energize our world rather than continuing to burn GHG-emitting fossil fuels.

But having said all of this, there are engineers, scientists and billionaire philanthropists like George Soros and Bill Gates who are promoting ways for us to procrastinate. Geoengineering solutions may mean we can continue to use fossil fuels while we come up with new ways to block the sun from heating the planet’s atmosphere, or technical fixes that allow us to neutralize the damage to the oceans that GHGs we produce are causing. Why not just do a bunch of technical fixes to let us have our cake and eat it too?