Humanity’s Challenges and Breakthroughs in Science and Technology That May Help – Part 2

The human challenges today that face us are dominated by the immediate global pandemic which was described in Part 1 of this series of postings along with a description of the technological revolution that is mRNA vaccines which have emerged because of COVID-19.

In Part 2, however, we look at anthropogenic climate change and the science and technology that can help us to mitigate, adapt, and eventually reverse the unintended consequences of our modern industrial activities on the planet.

Anthropogenic global warming has been flagged as a “code red” for the planet by the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If unfamiliar with its findings you can refer to the three-part series I recently posted on this site. Begin with the provided link which takes you to the last of the three because of its relevance to the discussion here.

If you have not read a lot about global warming you may not know that it is directly linked to increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from human activities. The gasses are produced from agricultural, industrial, domestic, and transportation sources. We can’t stop the activities, but we can apply science and technological innovation to ensure that they do not continue to accelerate the heating of the planet.

So what science and what technologies?

The Science That Can Be Done Now

As good as our scientific understanding of climate change has become since the first IPCC reports first published before the runup to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, we still have much to learn. The following are five areas where we need to do more homework:

1. Improve our knowledge and understanding of the role clouds play in contributing to or mitigating atmospheric warming.
2. Understand more than just the impact of long-term GHG emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) but also the GHG short-term emissions from: 
   • methane (CH4) which has a warming potential 28 to 36 times greater than CO2 over a century.
   • nitrous oxide (N2O) with a warming potential 265 to 298 times greater than CO2 over the same period.
   • hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) with warming potential hundreds to thousands of times more potent than CO2 over the same period.
   • other GHG contributors including sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), 23,600 times greater than CO2, and 6 different perfluorocarbons (PFCs) with similar warming potential to hydrofluorocarbons.
3. Increase data collection from global and space-based deployments of a comprehensive sensor network to further refine climate models to improve our understanding of GHG impacts on the ocean, atmosphere, and land.
4. Research and study continental, alpine and sea-ice dynamics to feed into existing and future global climate models.
5. Get a better handle on external natural change impacts coming from non-human factors including solar activity, and the geodynamic changes to the planet.

The Technological Innovation Needed to Reverse Climate Change

It is our inventive nature that has got us in trouble with nature. We are great at extracting value from the planet whether it be fossil fuels, minerals and other materials, or food. But sustainability has never been front and centre in our pursuit of Earth’s largesse.

Sustainability requires us to trigger a mind reset and we can do this. But first, we have to acknowledge how technology is contributing to global warming evident from the data collected by environmentalists and climate scientists.

Our mea culpa includes technology that bores holes into the planet to harvest GHG-producing energy products (fossil fuels).

Technology that mines underground and strips land surfaces, clear cuts forests, turns natural carbon sinks into GHG contributors and reshapes rivers, lakes, and coastlines without understanding the natural consequences of these activities.

Technology in the form of satellites and sensors that populate near-Earth space and the planet itself to sniff out even more extractive value to the point where we are consuming more than twice Earth’s ability to restore itself naturally annually.

Is it any wonder the planet is exhibiting a fever?

But what technology reaps it can also sow by helping us to reverse all of the above. Here are a few ways we can deploy technology to do just that.

1. Development of combustible non-GHG emitting fuels to replace fossil fuels. The leading contender is hydrogen which can be produced without GHG emissions from water using electrolysis or from biomass and waste using closed-system pyrolysis. There is a lot of activity in the green hydrogen file these days.
2. Replacement of fossil-fuel-based energy production and infrastructure with 100% renewable alternatives that include solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, wave, and natural and chemical storage mass deployment. Most renewable energy costs have dropped to become price competitive with traditional thermal energy production.
3. Eliminating short-term GHG emissions by fixing the mistakes and design flaws of our existing energy infrastructure. CH4 from pipe leaks and wellheads and HFCs and PFCs from industrial equipment can be eliminated this way. Meanwhile, N2O sources can be removed by taking fossil fuel-burning vehicles off the road, and SF6 sources can be eliminated by changing aluminum manufacturing processes.
4. Removing CO2 from the point of emissions and from the atmosphere directly. Deploying technology to capture CO2 from industrial and energy-emitting sources is a growing industry. And CO2 direct-air capture technology has seen the number of pilot projects grow in the last few years. The first direct-air capture commercial facility recently was deployed in Iceland. To draw down existing atmospheric carbon will take tens of thousands of CO2 capture solutions. Some argue that without them we will not be able to correct for the latent impact of legacy CO2 already in our atmosphere which will mean temperatures will continue to rise.
5. More problematic is the deployment of geoengineering technologies. These controversial ideas include adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere to cool the planet’s surface. Or deploying massive satellite sunshades in stationary orbit above the planet to produce a similar outcome. Then there is feeding clouds with chemicals to whiten them so they reflect sunlight. But in all of these geoengineering solutions, we have yet to consider unintended consequences and the long-term effects of their deployments.
6. Enhancing natural carbon sinks through:
   • genetically modified trees, and grasses planted on land, and algae (kelp) cultivation in the ocean to pull CO2 from the air.
   • automation of afforestation and reforestation efforts to increase tree growth as a counter to GHGs and using robots to do the planting and post-planting care.
   • using microbots inserted in soils to enhance the natural properties of subsurfaces to increase carbon uptake.
   • deploying sensors in ecosystems to monitor carbon storage effectiveness, police forests for illegal logging, and protect biodiversity.
   • the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive modelling to identify ongoing and future risks to existing natural carbon sinks.